>without that protection, the pharma companies would not have invented the drugs in the first place because their ROI would be insufficient without the governme

>without that protection, the pharma companies would not have invented the drugs in the first place because their ROI would be insufficient without the government-protected price premium. interesting, sounds like the invention and innovation would stop in that particular area of our technological civilization if the protection is turned off. Are we sure that the protection really stimulate the invention? I mean, in all other areas the government protection usually inhibits innovation - for example telecom started to boom as soon as demonopolization happened.