The government protects intellectual property rights by enforcing patents on new pharmaceutical drugs. Suppose the government, by enforcing patent laws, prevents a new drug by Merck from being copied by another company and made available at a dramatically reduced price. If you were a current consumer of this new pharmaceutical drug, you would initially be:________.

Intellectual Property Rights are certain legal laws framed by the government of a country to ensure that the formulation, procedure of synthesis and monopoly of production of certain novel commodities remain with the inventor or discoverer of the commodities in form of patents.
According to the question, the legalization of the production of a particular pharmaceutical drug solely by the company Merck through patents prevents other companies from producing the same drug by copying the formulation of the drug from Merck.
Hence, the Merck company gets the monopolistic control on the production of the particular pharmaceutical drug and it can determine the price of the drugs as per not only its research and development costs but also as per its profit margin.
This is because Merck lacks any competitor in the pharmaceutical market as far as the particular pharmaceutical drug is concerned, who could produce and sell the drug at reduced prices.
Hence, the price of the pharmaceutical drug would be high causing the consumers to pay more and suffer losses for consuming the drug.