[PhotonHunter]

    For drugmakers, we treat research and development as an asset that is depreciated over 15 years, which is more or less the lifetime of their patents.

This is not a good assumption. It's a super complicated subject, but what really matters is market exclusivity and I think most industry people would use 8–12 years as a realistic range for small molecule market exclusivity.†

I'm unsure how this revised assumption would alter the conclusions.

†one reference of many in support: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10242760/