Crazy pharmaceutical companies

Earlier this month we went to pick up one of Rebecca's prescriptions. A prescription that for the last six months, we had been paying $10 a month for. To our surprise, the prescription was $80 this time, and that's with our insurance. Apparently, the reason for this is the discount you can get from the pharmaceutical company only drops it to $10 for three months out of the year. The reason we got it for six straight months was because it was October-December of last year and January-March of this year...thus three months out of each year.  There's no way we can afford that.
According to the pharmacy tech, the price for this prescription without insurance is over $1000 a month. Sorry, that's insane. I understand that it takes a great deal of time and money to get a new medication to market, and I have no problem with a company trying to recoup what they invested in time, research, trials, and everything else that goes into creating medications, but I can't seriously believe that they need to charge that much for a medication. They would have easily regained their investment long before a generic can be made of the drug. Given that this medication helps to dramatically reduce the possibility of her disease turning into cancer, the pharmaceutical company basically has her and others like her over a barrel. There are basically only two medications that are available to Rebecca due to the fact that she does not have a mild condition, and the other medication will greatly weaken her immune system, which isn't good considering we have three kids and she works in a hospital. Unfortunately, it looks like there is probably a generic available for this med, so most likely her doctor will have to switch her over to it.
So, now she has to risk getting sick from everything that she's exposed to because we can't afford the one medication. This is one of the many things that are wrong with healthcare in America. The pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies have way too much influence in everything that goes on with us. It's almost like they have the power of the Gods to decide who lives and who dies, and like so many things in America, it's the poor who suffer the most.
That's just beyond insane!