I assume you're referring to studies like https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1715368115 that say publicly funded research has contributed to many major drugs. Yes that is true, but exactly how much is hard to quantify. If designing a new drug just required mooching off existing research the return on investment for making a new drug wouldn't be so high -- there is a reason every week small cap pharmaceutical companies on the NASDAQ either 10x or go to zero because of a drug approval/rejection. They are taking an enormous amount of risk! The average drug that gets approved cost a billion dollars to make.
> In 2019, the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion dollars on R&D. Adjusted for inflation, that amount is about 10 times what the industry spent per year in the 1980s.
And I can find studies like: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126
> In 2019, the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion dollars on R&D. Adjusted for inflation, that amount is about 10 times what the industry spent per year in the 1980s.