Blockchain needs to solve the pharmaceutical price problem

For the most part, it's not a problem with health insurance, since premiums are regulated fairly on what consumers are experiencing in the marketplace on price. In fact, some insurers are reaching down to medical providers on care to control to a certain extent the price problem but drug companies are still largely out of reach. If we work backwards on the drug price problem and assume it can be bartered on blockchain, then a cryptographic token is a promise to a unit of drug, a commodity. Token price is obviously affected by many factors, the most important being the current state of drug development, i.e. public discovery and research, company R&D, preclinical research, clinical research, FDA review, and FDA post-market release and regulatory review. Global price discovery is a powerful force that finds, to the extent of the market size, true value. If the government required drug companies to create a commodity token for a drug from company R&D to market release, than it would significantly mitigate issues with drug and/or investment companies acquiring drug companies, which forces drug price increases. The problem today is that mergers and acquisitions of drug companies has succumbed to Wall Street's appetite of greed and profit (i.e. see Valeant Pharmaceuticals), causing massive buyout costs that in turn are passed to patients that need these drugs at raised prices that insurance companies must bear. So on this proposal, investors and patients around the globe can buy the tokens of these promising drugs early in it's lifecycle and regulators can enforce the contract between the token holder and the drug company, irregardless of the current owner. Buyouts will take into account the token float in any buyout, since that must be accounted for in determining how effective a price increase would be.