In theory I agree with you. I think in practice that's not so much the case.
Drug companies fund the vast majority of drug research and they're much happier with already proven drugs (which are already paid for and have zero risk) than new drugs which aren't approved by regulators nor proven profitable yet.
If it were possible to fund the R&D for new drugs the same way tech/VC is done these days I would 100% agree with you. But the cost is so high and the timeline so long that no sane VC would write those checks and as a result it's big institutions only.
So what ends up happening is that we overpay for drugs so that the drug companies have enough money to spend 2x what they do on R&D on advertising, telling us which overpriced drugs we need.
