[nradov]

Your numbers are way off. The Affordable Care Act capped the insurance company's share at 20% (minimum 80% medical loss ratio). In practice most commercial payers are taking less than that. Certainly nowhere near 33%.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about drug discovery research. The major expense in bringing a new drug to market is not in the basic research but in the phase-3 clinical trials. Those often cost pharmaceutical companies upwards of $1B now.

[flagrant_taco]

How much do pharmaceutical companies make off of that $1b investment though? The scale of the investment only matters if they don't have the capital to cover.

[nradov]

Pharmaceutical company profit margins are generally in the 15% - 20% range.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-40

By comparison, several major tech companies have significantly higher profit margins.

[flagrant_taco]

That's more an argument against major tech companies than for pharmaceutical companies.