[Nasrudith]

To be fair there is also a risk calculus in everything - even if completely shielded from bad drug liability the profits need to be enough to make taking the gamble repeatably sustainable. To take a deliberately extreme example companies won't try to buy out entire lotteries until the jackpot is big enough to pay off if nobody else wins (thus cutting the income percentage by N - where N is the number of winners).

Greed is a factor and a problem of course but without running the numbers it is hard to say what is the smallest acceptable profit for the outcome.

I wonder if ironically we'll eventually start to see health insurance companies cut out the middleman and do cure research directly to cut their sustained costs. A bit idyllic to hope for yet it also indicates several other problems.