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People didn't "panic", but the markets and industry did certainly react to his ideas and behavior - the pharma company he ran (Valeant) tanked and he was ousted as CEO.

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They reacted to his public acknowledgement of private policy, not the policy itself. He was just parroting this McKinsey memo from 2010 [1].

R&D in the United States is dangerously neglected.

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medi...

R&D is done via acquisitions, basically outsourced to startups. Probably "more efficient this way". (Which is kind of true, after all if the big incumbent buys the competition, there's no real incentive to really upgrade their offering, as they just bought that too, and they can do a small symbolic upgrade. Plus eventually do the regular run of the mill, business as usual, do what everyone else does around the world, 0 risk course of action thing.)

Freakanomics did an interesting episode on this indicating that as companies mature they have to focus more on “maintenance” of existing business rather than R&D. Acquiring smaller businesses becomes a natural way of investing in R&D

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/

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