In that case, do charity organizations that collect money to cure specific diseases or cancers actually make a difference, since their donations are supposed to go to research for cures?
I'd say that they do make a difference relative to doing nothing. It's a way of funding cures that's independent of profit, same with government funding. As far as I can tell, the only solutions to this problem are government funding and private funding of cures.
A market based solution might be allowing pharma companies to charge extremely exorbitant prices for their cures, sufficient to recoup the foregone profits of treatment. But i'm not sure how well that would go down.
