[Silhouette]

Yet nothing that isn't paid for, can get done at any scale.

That doesn't mean it has to be privately funded with an arbitrarily large profit margin, though. In much of the world, we publicly fund some research, we fund quite a lot of medical research through charitable organisations as well, and we operate largely centralised public or at least semi-public healthcare services that buy the end results of the successful research at reasonable rates because of their huge negotiating power.

I think a lot of people from the US who have never been abroad for an extended period might not even realise how far behind normal standards the US really is in terms of how it manages its medical research and healthcare provision. People in much of the world really would assume you were joking if you said someone could go bankrupt just because they were unlucky and got sick, or that vital treatments that could save many lives might be withheld just because of profits.

Ironically, this is one of the main issues that torpedoed a US-EU trade deal not that long ago after many years of negotiations, probably at considerable economic cost to both parties. The general issue of excessive patent rights, and some national issues in member states such as the NHS being the "third rail" of UK politics, turned out to be deal-breakers.