Your logic doesn’t hold up. You’re forgetting that this data is where the drugs come from not who developed them. 100% of approved drugs were developed by pha

Your logic doesn’t hold up. You’re forgetting that this data is where the drugs come from not who developed them. 100% of approved drugs were developed by pharma. And that’s the most expensive part. Spend $5M on early research is great, but all the academics out-license because the government isn’t going to bankroll the $100M-$500M cost of actually shepherding it through FDA approval. Hence most of the financial risk is borne by the pharma companies. And you’re right, this doesn’t include the billions spent by pharma on failed projects. It’s a great deal for society. Let private money fund development. Let them pay for the 90% failure rate. And in exchange, they get ~10 year of patent protection, so the winners pay out a 10-100x return (to make it worth while investing at all). Then after the patent runs out, the price falls 90%+ and society gets to pay pennies on the dollar for innovation.