Robert Samuelson Shows Us How Patents Monopolies Impose Enormous Costs With Medical Technology

Patent monopolies raise the price of drugs from free market prices of $5-$10 per prescription to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per prescription. They have the same effect with medical devices.

The actual cost of using even the most advanced medical equipment is usually very low. After all, the machinery is already there, the only cost is a bit of electricity, the technicians' time and possibly the time of a highly paid medical specialist. Even if we averaged the cost of manufacturing...