If that is the primary obstacle, you can have a design which assigns money to a private research organization to develop drugs for government.
Also, current pharma will be biased against any cost effective solutions as this will cut their margins. There's got to be some alternative path to research and bring in these treatments to the public.
I 100% support a drug bounty program, where the government puts up a huge bounty (I.e. $1-3bn) for diseases where cures/treatments are needed, and pharma companies compete for those bounties. Victors would get the full bounty, and the govt would get the rights to the drug. Would allow the public to incentivize treatments that are best for public health, since companies are incentivized to create long-lasting, expensive treatments vs 1-off cures. And would decouple end-user price.
For instance, i think we would have found a vaccine for HIV by now if antiretrovirals weren’t so damn profitable over the lifespan of a patient.
Of course, that money would come out of your taxes as a US citizen. And since you'd still have to pay for the drug (even at the reduced price), you would just effectively be creating socialized medicine.
Also, current pharma will be biased against any cost effective solutions as this will cut their margins. There's got to be some alternative path to research and bring in these treatments to the public.