Jacking up prices of old drugs hurts society.

Title of a letter to the editors in Saturday's  Wall St. Journal.  The writer, an MD, correctly points out that the development costs of old drugs have been paid, and the extra price merely goes to enrich the drug maker and hurt patients.  And the MD goes on to suggest we need lawmakers to put in price controls. 
   Not so.  We want competition to bring down the price.  The FDA kills competition by requiring drug makers to obtain an FDA permit to sell any drug.  And they  only issue the permit to one company.  This is a government mandated monopoly, and the monopoly players take advantage of their monopoly by ripping us all off. 
   Once a drug goes off patent, any company ought to be able to make it and sell it with out doing FDA paperwork.  We might want FDA to inspect the newcomer's manufacturing process to make sure the drug is properly made, but that's it.  If the company wants to make a drug, it can, and the FDA should not be able to forbid it.  That's one fix.
   Fix number two would allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, places like Canada, England, Japan, France, Germany, where we think they have reasonable quality control of the drug making processes.  Those countries have public health as good as we do, often better, and the drugs they sell to their people are plenty good enough, which means they are plenty good enough for Americans too.  And the prices of foreign drugs can be way lower.  Those Epipens that got jacked up to $600 can be had in Europe for $20.