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BOSTON — Despite heated rhetoric over the cost of prescription drugs, pricing of today’s medicines is “messy and complicated,” the governor of Massachusetts said Monday, allowing that pharmaceutical companies have the right to try to recoup their investments.

Gov. Charlie Baker, asked whether drug companies are “getting away with murder” as President Trump has alleged, said “innovation is expensive,” particularly when “figuring out the human body.”

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Speaking at an event in Boston hosted by STAT and The Atlantic, Baker defended Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a Massachusetts-based drug company that scored FDA approval in February for its third cystic fibrosis drug and that has been criticized for its pricing decisions.

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