[pg_bot]

Big Pharma also pays billions in taxes to fund agencies like the NIH. While there are certainly a lot of shenanigans with intellectual property rights and market exclusivity at the end of the day we do get extreme value from pharmaceutical companies. If there was more competition, we would not see price hikes as often as we do.

[xracy]

People pretend like competition is some magic thing that could crop up, and not a thing that requires constant regulation to prevent companies from engaging in anti-competitive behavior. Every company is incentivized to engage in anti-competitive behavior. If you want more competition, they need to be strictly regulated.

[xracy]

As proof of this, consider how incentivized even sports teams are to cheat in what would otherwise be a fair competition.