Answer:The root cause of this is capitalism. The doctors and scientists who create new medicines are employed by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies are businesses just as much as a car company is a business and the function of any business is to make money. In order to make money off of medicine there either needs to be a large demand for such a medicine or, if the market is small, the cost needs to be high enough to offset the lower demand. Unlike consumer goods, the demand for medicine does not fluctuate with cost. In regards to scarcity of medication, this is caused when the demand is low and even with an increased cost the profitability is lower than a medication with higher demand. A pharmaceutical company can only manufacture a finite amount of medication at any given time and because they are a business they make this decision based on how much profit they can make. Because of this medication with less demand is manufactured in minimal amounts which leads to scarcity.