It's easy to say that when it doesn't affect you but I had a childhood friend die last year from CF because he couldn't afford the medical treatments. He was using the various "public funding" sites to raise money but in the end it wasn't enough and he died.

I don't know what the solution is as it's a complex issue... but seeing someone young (in their 30s) die from something preventable because they can't afford the drug is perhaps one of the most horrifying and dystopian things I've seen in my life and makes me worried for our future. One presumably where the rich can live 50 years longer than the "poors".

The incentive is saving lives. That's what the researchers are in it for. The research is in large part publicly funded. Pharmaceutical companies are just charging rent on top of the discoveries.

The best argument you can make is that private pharma competes to improve manufacturing processes, but you world also have that in a 100% public system from multiple countries competing/collaborating with each other.

They can have their cut, but the swell thing to do would be allowing poorer countries to produce it for their domestic use.