Profitability of Large Pharmaceutical Companies Compared With Other Large Public Companies

(Abstracted from JAMA 2020;323(9):834–843) Virtually all of the US Food and Drug Administration–approved medications in the United States were developed by for-profit companies, thus demonstrating the importance of these corporations in providing medicine to the public. Understanding both drug costs and company profits is vital to creating evidence-based policies that balance the cost of medicine with the industry's ability to innovate.