[ben_w]

> All existing drugs would be very close to free, but all currently-uncured illnesses would forever stay uncured.

Unless there's government funding.

Also consider that for both patents and government funding, there are other jurisdictions which won't do what your government does, so there's a Nash equilibrium problem where every country has people who want to defect (delete patents) to get free stuff whose research was paid for by the profit margin in the jurisdiction which keeps the patents.