Yeah. The patent protects the huge investment the original drug company had to make to develop the product, non of which the copycat drug makers have to spend.
Even though people routinely complain about the high price of pharmaceuticals, they actually are a great bargain compared to most other medical care, saving lives at an average cost of only $1,000 per added year of life. This may not seem a great deal to countries whose citizens have to get by on less than $1 a day, but their plight is not the fault or responsibility of pharma manufacturers.
What if we adopted the position that NO technological improvements could be permitted in the industrialized world until/unless such technology were immediately available and affordable to all 6 billion people around the world? We’d all still be subsistence farmers.
The solution to world poverty is free markets and free trade, not heavy-handed prohibitions on innovation (and the companion freedom to buy goods and services that improve our lives) due to misplaced concerns about “fairness.” As John Kennedy once said “Life is unfair.” It’s about time the Barack Obamas of the world learned to deal with it. The Pope would be better served finding a speech-writer who knew a little about basic economics.