You can&#x27;t have &quot;real competition&quot; in the drug industry. While the status of patents is debatable in software (where actual copying is rare), the generics manufacturers are always directly copying from the drug inventors. They don&#x27;t have the capability to do their own R&amp;D, or often even to develop a lot of the ancillary protocols themselves.<p>So you either have a regulated market, or massive free-riding, neither of which is &quot;real competition.&quot;