Suppose for one second that all these people are profit motivated. Whatever research money there is, there is far far far more to be had for the patent royalties from treatments.

Not even close. So much more money to be made from treatment than from research. And there is so much money to be had from beating a competitor with a better treatment than there is to have an equivalent treatment

Taking a cynical profit-only driven view of the world would optimize for better cancer care.

But nobody goes into it "aha I want to make a lot of money." They might go into it wanting to get famous for coming up with a cancer cure. But take the cures that are most closely associated with individuals, whether it's a drug targeting BCR-ABL1 fusions or HER2, and almost nobody knows their name. So even then the fame motive is pretty weak.