The time has come for Americans to wise up and demand an end to endless patent rights given to pharmaceutical companies. The idea that drug patents can be indefinitely extended into perpetuity flies in the face of sound health policies and competition with innovation in the marketplace. I always chuckle when I hear people talk about "free" markets and unrestricted capitalism. What the world gets in our "free market" world of today is a gamed economic reality where little innovation takes place and you cannot find competition if you looked for it. Allow a patent life on a drug for five years before generics can enter into the market place. This gives plenty of time to recoup  the costs on new drugs, which are always sold at astronomical prices when introduced. The argument that so much money is spent on research and development does not hold water any longer in the face of advertising budgets that now dwarf actual drug development costs. All drug stores should be able to offer hundreds of low price drugs that cost next to nothing to manufacture and ship, but we need to work on the next generation of  prohibitively priced medicines  to make any impact  on spiralingly high  medical costs.