But one thing that was not frozen was the price of drugs.

In fact, on new year's day many of the largest drugmakers, including Pfizer, Allergan, and GlaxoSmithKline, raised the prices on thousands of products.

Now these increases were not of the scale made famous by Martin Shkreli,

who once raised the price of a drug by more than 5000%.

But they average around 10%, and they happen more or less every year.

And pricing campaigners are saying that they actually cost the healthcare system far more than the likes of Martin Shkreli.

Now some investors are starting to ask whether raising prices with such abandon is actually a bad move for the industry,

given that the topic has become a hot potato for politicians.

Indeed, Donald Trump has accused the industry several times now of getting away with murder.

And Hillary Clinton made the issue a centrepiece of her presidential campaign.

Drugmakers say they need to raise prices, they have to protect their profits so they can spend more money researching new medicines.

And they also claim that middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers,

are demanding ever greater rebates and pushing up the overall cost of drugs.

Now that's going to provide scant consolation for the millions of patients who are going to pharmacies like the one behind me,

only to find out that the cost of medicines has gone up yet again.