1. By way of self-inflicted damage
That was a lie to justify insurance price gouging.
> More than half of excess U.S. health spending was associated with factors likely reflected in higher prices, including more spending on: administrative costs of insurance (~15% of the excess), administrative costs borne by providers (~15%), prescription drugs (~10%), wages for physicians (~10%) and registered nurses (~5%), and medical machinery and equipment (less than 5%). Reductions in administrative burdens and drug costs could substantially reduce the difference between U.S. and peer nation health spending.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
Funding the research privately increases costs to end user as private ensurer is directly accruing more cost. Research stopping increases costs to end user as new/novel cures/treatments aren't found.
Cost for consumer goes up because of lost opportunity cost of 1) learning to diagnose earlier 2) finding new or cheaper cures/treatments.
You can make the argument 'But other countries will pick up the slack!' - but that doesn't necessarily help either, why would they give us the results of their research cheaper? US already jacked up pricing via an executive order on drug pricing just this year to knock that.
Publicly funded medical research is an absolute positive for the US general public health and wallets. We're all losing here on both ends of the spectrum ($$ and actual general public health).