Starver: I guess public-funded research would work best. Especially in countries with state-funded healthcare it makes sense to me that have state-funded companies. And they can still charge for drugs abroad.
This is verging on another argument, but here in the UK we happen to have a government at the moment that's cutting down on all spending (even the "spend money to make money[1]" things), and (depending who you ask) the public spending on healthcare is
at least frozen, and some people claim it is doomed and the oft-derided but definitely-better-than-nothing[2] NHS is going to crash and burn.
And we're apparently less anti-public-funding than the US, and I can't think of many countries that would easily step up to the mark. Apart, IIRC, that Cuba actually does something like this (perhaps by ignoring international IP, though). And, hey! There's always China. They can (if they're not already) do something for their own people and sell it all to the rest of the world. Nope, can't see any problems with any part of that scenario in that capitilo-communistic hybrid country that's already the manufacturer of choice for so many other countries' consumer products...
Anyway, way off the subject mark, now.
[1] Esp. by making/keeping jobs that the people in would pay income tax for instead of pestering the benefits system. But economics was never something I studied, so I've probably gotten something wrong, there...
[2] I still don't know whether the guy who was complaining on an online chat of his not-stopping nosebleed ever got himself to hospital. He talked about the expense of doing so, there in the US, whereas the rest of us were talking of
the need to not risk bleeding to death. I actually rarely go to hospitals or doctors (last major time was for appendicitis, a once-in-a-lifetime ailment at most, usually), but I'm glad that I can just turn up (or be taken there, if worst comes to the worst) and get treated if I really needed. But this is
definitely off-topic.