A lot of these arguments skip the obvious fact that the FDA could provide its own form of commercial exclusivity without needing patents at all.
You can't sell medication without FDA approval. Right now patents don't factor in to it, but if patents were eliminated the FDA could implement a similar scheme exclusively for medication.
I also suspect that the high cost of FDA approval is not treated as a negative by many in the medical industry, as it provides a nice high barrier to entry which helps reduce competition. This seems to be especially true of some of the producers of medical devices.
While this is a valid issue, it does demonstrate how strict a gate-keeper the FDA is. You can't sell anything with a purely medical purpose to anyone without the right certifications. I'm sure there's a lock on something as simple as tongue-depressors that can't be broken because getting your product certified is non-trivial. There isn't even an invention involved here.
You can't sell medication without FDA approval. Right now patents don't factor in to it, but if patents were eliminated the FDA could implement a similar scheme exclusively for medication.