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I don't know if this quite fits the topic, but you could also write a really interesting paper on the pharmaceutical industry and their government-enforced monopoly on patented drugs, and the effect that politics has on drug prices worldwide.
There's been a lot of talk lately about subsidizing AIDS drugs, for instance, in developing countries where they can't afford them. Well it turns out, if the situation were left alone, it would take care of itself.
There's a phenomenon that happens inside a monopoly situation called Price Discrimination. The idea is that the monopolist sells their product for what they can get for it where they sell it. So patented drugs are expensive in the US where people, generally, can pay for them, and super cheap in developing countries where they can't. Drug companies can afford to sell their drugs for pennies in the third world, because they make up for it in the US and Europe. This is a natural economic phenomenon that occurs when somebody has a monopoly on a product, and if it were allowed to happen with drugs, many many many lives would be saved in developing countries.
Problem is, politicians and HMOs won't stand for it. They get into this big grandstanding thing about "If you can afford to sell it for $0.05 in Uganda, why is my HMO member/constituent in Topeka paying $50.00 for it?" They force the drug companies to keep the prices high worldwide, artificially destroying the supply and demand curve and keeping the drug out of the hands of people in the third world. It's fair to say that politicians and HMOs are killing millions of people in developing countries.
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