Each level of government is susceptible to different sorts of pressure from different lobbies. What the federal government is susceptible to by way of pressure is very different from what an individual province might be susceptible to, and it varies province to province. Ontario has a rather big drug industry within its borders; Saskatchewan does not. Based on that, you might predict that Saskatchewan would be more willing or more capable of being aggressive on prices than Ontario before the premier's phone rang and threats were made to close a factory or that sort of thing.
I don't accept the premise of your question that simply shifting from one level of government to another replicates the problems in that other level of government. You would just create a different set of problems, but perhaps ones that are more amenable to being solved.