NYT Can't Distinguish Between Patent Monopolies and Licensing Requirements

The New York Times ran a very confusing piece on the difficulties that many people in China are facing in getting access to drugs. The piece does not clearly distinguish between the problem of drugs not being legally available because they have not been licensed by China's drug safety agency and drugs being expensive in China due to patent monopolies.

These are very different issues. The first can be readily solved by making the licensing agency more efficient and possibly also relying on app...