Breaking the Pill Monopoly: Consumer Justice in the Age of Pharmaceutical Power

ABSTRACT

The real problem in healthcare is not a deficiency in treatments, but control over prices. When survival is priced based on patents, patients are bound by profit interests. This paradox is at the core of international debate over drug monopolies and consumer rights.2 Innovation often sets up barriers that restrict affordable access to essential medicines. The gap between intellectual property rights and the right to health has fueled inequalities, leaving millions without means to access lifesaving drugs. Access to medicines is viewed in this essay as a dual entitlement, seen as a right of consumers as well as a fundamental right of humans.3 The essay is a comparative legal analysis that considers the operation of compulsory license, legal opposition to patent evergreening, and TRIPS agreement limitations on equitable fair play in healthcare. Further it looks at how monopolistic acts, patent evergreening, and unintelligible pricing models undermine consumer rights and public health examining in particular the tension between fostering innovation and a compelling need for equitable fair play in healthcare. The research advocates a rights approach that reframes boundaries in protecting  consumers in the pharmacy industry. The core objective delves upon breaking up the monopoly is not a principle of market fairness alone; it is ensuring the right to health transcends profit and becomes a universal principle. The medicine monopoly has no place in a society committed to fairness, justice, and preserving life itself.