Comment by WorldMaker

Which the US had a situation exactly like that until very recently: development labs, often at Universities, with scientists paid for by grants (some private, but the majority being public, government grants), with clinical trials overseen by government agencies like the National Institute for Health (NIH), and winning research eventually being tech transferred for cheap to Pharmaceutical companies to manufacture, distribute, and market.

The companies have the biggest PR arms, so took the most credit for a system that had been balanced on a lot of government funding in the earlier, riskier stages. Eventually the marketing got so unbalanced people didn't realize how much the system was more complex than the marketing and voted for people that decided it was a "free market" idea to smash the government funding for the hard parts of science.