Pricing practices can get scrutiny through various anti-trust laws such as Robinson-Patman, Sherman, and Clayton. Having patent protection is not an excuse to price gouge. Any large corporation runs the risk of an inquiry when price gouging or the opposite, dumping at prices below fully apportioned cost, are occurring.
Now that we are in a global economic model, pricing of drugs in Europe should reflect reasonably with prices in the U.S. after currency adjustments. But they don't, the Europeans pay much less for the same drug sold in the U.S. That is just one example.
The solution is to have a world-wide base price for the drug that returns a reasonable profit to the drug owner in the country of ownership. An EU country can either import at a wholesale level of trade, and then mark up reasonably for their citizens, or be forced to go off-shore and buy at the retail level of trade and then that country's government can eat the delta in price that it chooses to sell to its citizens.
That would level the global pricing practices such that the "similarly situated" concept is applied and there is a fair pricing practice globally.
There is absolutely no reason for a U.S. consumer to pay more for drugs designed and manufactured in the U.S. v. the rest of the world. It is not our responsibility to subsidize the drug benefit of other citizens at our expense.
