One aspect of the patent system is that the government or non profits or whatever could do drug development, get patents and then give away licensing.<p>Would doing that put an end to commercial drug development? Or would commercial drug makers continue to seek treatments where they saw opportunities to profit?<p>Sofosbuvir is a really great test of how we reason about this stuff. The price is high and easy to balk at, but it&#x27;s cheaper and better than the previous treatment. Cheaper and better are clearly compatible with the profit motive. So we are left with our intuition that the price is unfairly high. I think part of the answer is to look at how medical payments are structured.