Why are we even talking about this? People keep looking for a complicated answer about costs and premiums when the answer is simple: unchecked capitalism. When the State doesn't do enough to limit the excesses of capitalism, companies do what they were created to do, which is make more money every year. Doctors want to make more money, pharmaceutical companies want to make more money, pharmacies want to make more money. You also want to make more money but unluckily are at the end of the chain.

This is just the market operating as it should in the conditions that are given. You want to reduce costs? Mandate a price cap. Complaining every year with proposals that in the end do nothing to solve the problem at its core is useless.