For the record, the 2 billion dollars figure is from the notorious tufts centre for the study of drug development, which is heavily pharma-backed.

It's a very, VERY controversial figure in the pharmacoeconomic literature, but has been accepted as gospel due to continuous repetition in shitty reporting.

Fairly good article discussing this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/18/does-...