Pharmaceutical companies typically claim that the reason for high drugs prices is because of the amount that they spend on research and development (R&D). According to the industry, it costs USD $2.6 billion to bring a drug to market [1]. Critics counter that companies are more focused on and spend more on promotion than on R&D. Gagnon and Lexchin produced figures that showed that in the United States in 2004 the industry spent USD $57.5 billion on promotion versus USD $31.5 billion on R&D [2]. A report from the California-based Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy stated that in 2015 out of the top 100 pharmaceutical companies by sales, 64 spent twice as much on marketing and sales than on R&D, 58 spent three times, 43 spent five times as much and 27 spent 10 times the amount [3].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26928437 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2174966/ [3] https://nurses.3cdn.net/e74ab9a3e937fe5646_afm6bh0u9.pdf