It's not "as if" this were the case, this is the case. Most especially with drug discovery. In many cases the only people who pay to recoup the R&D costs of a new drug are Americans, while the rest of the world only pays the marginal costs of production.
P.S. For the drug companies this isn't a big problem because they still make back their development costs and there isn't much they can do when dealing with big state run health care systems. It's not fair but from a practical standpoint it still works. However, it does put the world's healthcare system at risk because people in the US are starting to think that drug companies are screwing them and they want the same deal the rest of the world has, they want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Since there's nowhere else for significant profits the obvious result would be a diminishing in drug discovery.
P.S. For the drug companies this isn't a big problem because they still make back their development costs and there isn't much they can do when dealing with big state run health care systems. It's not fair but from a practical standpoint it still works. However, it does put the world's healthcare system at risk because people in the US are starting to think that drug companies are screwing them and they want the same deal the rest of the world has, they want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Since there's nowhere else for significant profits the obvious result would be a diminishing in drug discovery.