Why do pills taste so bad?

I've tried a bunch of different pills, Panadol/Tylenol, ibuprofen/advil, antihistamines, Ritalin, etc, and they all taste terrible. I had one once that had a tiny bit of sugar on the outside so the first few seconds of sucking on it were ok and then it went bitter and yuck like all the rest.

I can barely stand it after several minutes, so i've taken to just chomping on the panadol when it gets too bad and trying to wash out the taste with water.

You would think they could have invented strawberry or something but every pill has the almost exact same horrible bitter flavour.