Cost and (Bio)Availability as Variables in Pharmacological Effect: Why Not Standardize?

When reading studies on the effect of different drugs on illness, I notice that cost per mg is rarely considered. For over a year, I have been reading relative effectiveness of antihypertensive medication, specifically Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) Inhibitors against Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers (ARB) and their comparative strengths on lowering both systolic and diastolic pressures, and it is always a wonder to me why, for example, Telmisartan at 80 mg is compared to Enalapril at 10 mg, when the cost of one drug relative to the other is so large. This question is relevant because pharmacological effects of each drug clearly vary with dose: Telmisartran at 40 mg has differential effectiveness compared to 80 mg; and so also for Enalapril at 10 mg against 20 mg. I am hoping for some comments to this blog from biochemists or cardiovascular specialists because I am clearly puzzled. If dose is operationalized as mg/dL for example, shouldn't a comparative effects study first start at similar magnitude of effects, or alternatively, describe differential effectiveness at similar dosage?

This question reflects the higher sophistication, I think, of social statistics as compared to statistics used in physical or biomedical experiments. The social sciences, having accepted that the laboratory can not be the de rigueur setting for its research were the first to demand the use of beta coefficients, instead of unstandardized partial regression coefficients when comparing controlled effects of the independent variables. Along our example, may I not ask validly (rightly) whether the observed greater effect of Telmisartan vis-a-vis Enalapril is due to its greater presence in terms of mg/dL in plasma or availability in vascular tissues, rather than on their chemical structures? Let me state that I am a (bio)statistician and not a physician, so these concerns of mine are not simply rhetorical, even though many blogs nowadays are like that. I hope this is not personal, but...Oh what the heck this is personal because I have essential hypertension and the cost of medication is not a trivial issue to me, and I suppose not to many of us.

To end, let me just mention some studies of differential effectiveness I refer to: Comparison of the efficacy and tolerability of telmisartan and enalapril in patients of mild to moderate essential hypertension by Pramod B Akat, Tushar R Bapat, Mangala B Murthy, Vitthal B Karande, Shreyas R Burute;  and Telmisartan versus Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibitors by Z. Zou, et al.