No need for it to be the same. The point is that research fails ALL THE TIME. It is trivially easy to believe that the public route, by chance and to no fault o

No need for it to be the same. The point is that research fails ALL THE TIME. It is trivially easy to believe that the public route, by chance and to no fault of the researcher's competence, does not work whereas the private one did. So what happens then? Because that is basically where we are now, it's just that the government lost money funding one particular idea. It would be great if the public developed useful, novel drugs. But if you're proposing a system where the private side can still develop them, patent them, and sell them at a high price; then it's not really different from today. You shouldn't assume that both parties would solve problems independently and redundantly. It doesn't even really make sense to pursue alternative development. If there's a cure for X; are you REALLY going to encourage public researchers to find a different cure for the same thing to try and lower the cost of the drug? That sounds like a very ineffective approach.