The pharmatech industry should be incredibly profitable. Consider what they do.
They create magic potions. They start with ordinary ingredients and create "Potion of healing +5". These potions save people's lives every day.
And the great thing about these drugs is that they create keep getting better. So, what's the problem?
Well, they need to research new drugs that work even better still. It takes a lot of time and effort to research. And, once they finish a branch of research, they need to protect their knowledge from those who would steal it and use it haphazardly.
This is the reason for patents and high prices. The high prices are necessary to squeeze returns out of a drug before the knowledge of its composition and manufacture is gained through reverse engineering and chemistry by the competition. Once this happens, and generic knockoffs hit the market, profits dry up. If the patent expires, bam, profitiability almost instantly drops to near zero. Foreign generic houses get the formulation right, bam, profitability on the global market drops to near zero. SO, they do need to extract profits while they can.
Don't worry, though. As a consumer, we all have a choice as to what drugs we want to use. Next time your doctor prescibes the latest wonder drug (incredibly effective, but expensive) ask instead for older, cheaper pharmatechnology. Don't get a Z-pack (3 pills, zithromax) for that respiratory infection, ask for amoxicillin instead. Even though you'll have to take 30 pills, and your infection probably will last 3-4 times longer, and it may not clear it up at all, it is cheaper.
Removing profit incentive will destroy any pharmatech or biotech progress. Generic producers don't research new treatment. They don't have the resources, incentive, or brainpower to create new breakthroughs. They copy someone else's work.
To bad for profitability. If we didn't have to worry about medical profits, we would still be using leeches and bloodletting to draw off the evil vapors that cause the pox.