Regarding drug cost and development, I wonder what the drug market would look like without patent law? Right now, and for the foreseeable future, drug R&D is expensive. If companies could not patent their drugs they would not make enough money off their product to be profitable. What would this do to the market?
One possible way it would work is that all drug development would be done by non-profits and government sponsored labs. Then drug R&D would be paid for directly by the people who want the drugs upfront and anyone could produce them. The final cost of drugs would be just a markup on the manufacturing cost.
The alternative is that people would not develop drugs, but I find it hard to believe that this would be the case.