[evgen]

It did not take $8.7B to develop this drug. Novartis paid that amount (a huge premium over what was expected) to purchase the company that actually did the work. As another poster has noted, if you include the cost of clinical trials this cost closer to $700M.

One can make various claims regarding what value private enterprise made in the process of getting this drug to market, but none of that value proposition was provided by Novartis. Novartis is just the one who saw something shiny and new and who (over)paid a ton of money to get the right to be the gatekeeper for this treatment and set the toll.