I don&#x27;t think you could get that to fly politically.  While it is true that drugs require high prices to recoup research cost and that drug patents allow drug companies to charge those high prices, they don&#x27;t just recoup prices.  They charge as much as they can.  From the point of view of trying to save as many people as possible for the money, that sucks, but from the point of view of encouraging investment in drug companies it is seen as a necessary evil.<p>I won&#x27;t try to rehash all of the permutations of ways that might work (just search HN for any discussion of drug companies and patents and you will be able to enumerate them).  I suspect that there are ways to improve the present system substantially, but I concede that the problem is much harder than I can solve.  Hopefully someone will be able to do it some day.