your analogy fails because the steam engine really only had to be invented once, and did not have regulations that involved at least ten years of testing and clinical trials before it even carried its first passenger or freight.  drugs on the other hand are generally novel formulations and require sometimes decades of testing before the pharma company sees a profit, meanwhile the company has to stay solvent while paying employees, lawyers, and funding research for new drugs. this is where the other fallacy of "well it only cost $2 to make that drug so it should cost $2" discounting the billions of dollars it took to get that $2 drug to the market. are pharma companies greedy and corrupt too? yes they are, but that is incidental to the massive costs involved in just drug development. even if pharma companies were not corrupt and executive salaries were curbed the costs involved would still be astronomical.
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