No they don’t. I know exactly what you are citing (if not the exact source then from the same thing that number originates from) . The pharmacy industry spends a tiny fraction of its money on marketing. R & d isn’t cheap and there’s a reason why it’s almost entirely done in the USA. The cost of developing the average drug is 5-20 billion, that’s assuming you are developing numerous drugs at the same time and already have the facility. You’ll need about 3 times the r & d cost to break even on your 10-20 year investment that hopefully worked. Regulations also aren’t the issue, that part is correct. Those regulations are mostly needed. The only issue is that human biology is complex. We can reduce the cost of drugs to a fraction of their current cost but that only happens if we give up for decades to a century while we wait for understanding of human biology to catch up. The pharmaceutical industry isn’t the enemy, isn’t your friend but it also isn’t responsible for the absurd cost of things. It is an easy target though, especially since the industry itself doesn’t behave in a way that’s typical.

Drug development currently amounts to trying to amounts to gambling, more knowledge and skills you have and the better your odds become.