[missedthecue]

A lot of basic research is government funded, i.e. grants for ongoing research at public universities, but except in extreme outlier cases like the global pandemic, private biotech companies don't get free government handouts for their drug research, and certainly not in meaningful amounts. For perspective, privately funded medical research spend is more than 5x the total NIH budget, and only a portion of the NIH budget actually goes to drug research.

[asadotzler]

They indeed do get plenty of free government handouts for R&D. Their labs take a fortune in NIH grants. Sure, a lot of that is to public institutuions but plenty goes to private labs.