Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
Huh? My point was going to your monopoly pricing point. You are also failing to consider that 2 patented drugs made by different companies often are in competition with one another.
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Right, and so was my response. If you look at the profits derived from production of pharmaceuticals, an outsized portion come during the window of exclusivity that either patents, FDA approval, or both provide. As soon as there's generic entry, the profits go way down. To barely profitable levels. So the point is that drug cos. get nearly their entire return on R&D for a given drug (plus the costs of the 100 failures) during a narrow monopoly opportunity. But that monopoly price is not "efficient" in an economic sense, because it's a monopoly price and there's deadweight loss in nearly every monopoly situation.
