Not to mention how many medications are patented. The patents do serve a purpose — taking a drug to market is both incredibly expensive and has a high failure r

Not to mention how many medications are patented. The patents do serve a purpose — taking a drug to market is both incredibly expensive and has a high failure rate, so a company needs a guarantee of some kind of return to take that chance. Maybe regulations requiring some level of redundancy for essential medication production provides a necessary middle ground. The return on such products will be slightly less, but if such a medication is so important, the revenue it generates is likely to still be large.