economic pet peeve ii On drug re-importation, Jane Galt, after arguing for the importance of patents in drug research, writes:

We have a free market that pays for drugs to be developed.

Now, whether you think patents are a good thing or not, it's hard to deny that they're temporary grants of monopoly by the government. And one of the cornerstones of a "free market" is that if I can more cheaply produce what you're producing, I'm free to compete with you. Hence, a more accurate statement would be

We have government intervention in the market that pays for drugs to be developed.

(I'm not trying to argue here whether patents are good or not -- just pointing out the perversity of referring to the drug market as a "free market.")