Like almost everything, nothing is inherently good or bad (some dogs excepted). Losing the hero-villain narrative opens up a whole slate of interesting complexities, some of which I'd like to get into throughout this work.
To that end, regulating a free-market system is an interesting beast. It's been in the news a bit of late, with merck suing the government. The Tl;dr of this is the Inflation Reduction Act gives, among other things, Medicare the option to negotiate the prices for certain drugs. Just ten at first, then going up to 60 eventually. Merck is saying this impinges on their fifth amendment rights, and that it is tantamount to the government taking private property. On the surface, this argument may have some traction, at least to get some lengthy court time. But the more interesting bit are the carve-outs. For example, the new rules for negotiation don't apply to rare disease drugs (makes sense, as the incentives to develop a drug for few patients is lower, and the gov already provides incentives to develop these drugs). But when a rare drug gains a second indication (e.g., using drug A for disease A and disease B) it loses these protections. This flips the incentives for pharma companies, which usually used the incentives to develop a drug for rare and then expand it to the mainstream. The new rules disincentivize expanding the use of drugs, which seems both counterproductive and wasteful.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but the law of unintended consequences seems to be the strongest force of rule when free market and government collide.
