Right, so in this case there was a tiny modicum of competition, and the smart company selling the drug priced their product appropriately.<p>However, that does not mean that they (or some other organization) couldn&#x27;t have developed this drug for less.<p>The question isn&#x27;t whether it&#x27;s better that what came before, the question is whether it&#x27;s <i>efficient</i>.  If there were many buyers and sellers, you&#x27;d have some faith that <i>is</i> at least approximately efficient.<p>But with just one seller, they could recoup their costs many, many times over.  That&#x27;s terribly inefficient - those resources could be better used elsewhere.<p>And it&#x27;s quite a bit worse than that - by being so inefficient, you&#x27;re creating all kinds of perverse incentives.  Instead of trying to find and create a worthwhile drug, the aim is to find those drugs with captive audiences.  The Martin Shkreli saga illustrates that quite blatantly.<p>The appropriate benchmark is efficiency, <i>not</i> whether the drug at the offered price is better than nothing.