The flip critique of the drug industry is to suggest they're basically taking miracle cures developed in toto in publicly-funded labs and taking pure profits.
If that were the case, shouldn't one of the dozens of well-capitalized research institutions just go to market?
The reality is the drug companies take on a tremendous burden turning high-level research into a product that works, including:
+ Formulating a product that will work at scale,
+ In widely diverse populations,
+ While eliminating potential side effects, + Adapting for human UX limitations,
+ Exhaustively guarding against adverse reactions,
+ At the same time, building production capacity,
+ Creates marketing materials for patients, but also to educate doctors who don't have scads of time to study new treatments,
+ Physically distributing the product
+ Monitoring the product fastidiously once it's on the market for negative reactions,
+ Sending humans to almost every doctor's office to answer any questions about the product,
+ While staffing a 24/7 customer service number to sort out any problems
It's not as easy as it's made out to be!