This is a bad question and a horrible attempt to answer (I&#x27;m being so abrasive because at this moment this is the highest voted comment). It&#x27;s a bad question because it invites wishful thinking. Prediction generally has a very bad track record, and right now you&#x27;re trying to predict a mixture of economy, free market incentives and technology. Hard to find something more unpredictable.<p>What you can do is look at the past and find correlation and causation. It&#x27;s reasonably straightforward. Take a number of drugs and treatments, best if done randomly. See the process that got them on the market, and try to figure where patents fit in the picture.<p>I tried it just for fun, and found something interesting: up to half a century ago, you had a person&#x27;s name associated with a drug. More recently, and you have a company. This is not an answer, but a hint that maybe things move towards being more expensive. Which of course brings us to the regulatory process: once a drug identified, what is the cost of having the papers stamped and who is motivated to pay for it?