The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them) 
> The poster child for strong patent protection is usually the pharmaceutical industry, as drugs are easily copied and can cost upwards of a billion dollars to develop. Here, Boldrin and Levine admit that the government would likely need to step in. But rather than giving companies a legal monopoly over their formulas, the authors suggest we should modify the drug approval process to let makers start recouping their costs faster. They would also set up a prize system to reward companies that invent the new medicines we need.<p>This strikes me as a really fantastic idea.  Actually, I wonder if insurance companies shouldn't offer these prizes regardless of the patent situation.  They know intimately well which disorders cost them the most money.  They could form a consortium and offer a prize for x amount of money for reducing the cost of treating some disorder by y dollars per patient, where x is guaranteed to be less than the amount of money they will save.