Price is not a property of the molecule.

A molecule has a structure. Its price comes later, produced by rules, expectations and relations of power. Yet in public debate, the price of a medicine often comes to seem like one of its natural characteristics, as if it were its molecular weight.

The WHO describes high prices as a barrier to access to medicines and calls for the policies governing them to be assessed and reviewed. That alone shifts the problem: from the isolated product to the conditions under which it circulates.

Research costs money. So does failure. These facts alone do not establish what price is justified for a particular product. That discussion requires information about additional benefit, alternatives, risk and who bore it. The word innovation cannot do all that work for us.

When a price is presented as inevitable, negotiation disappears from view. What remains looks like a compulsory choice: find more money or go without. This is a convenient frame for anyone able to set the initial terms.

A critical pharmacoeconomics begins before the calculation. It asks how that price was reached, which alternatives were excluded and who had a voice in the discussion. The numbers come afterwards. Then they can finally answer a less domesticated question.