It's not an "argument" per se, as in whether we should or shouldn't pay the pharma companies. Of course we should pay pharma for this for COVID, and of course it is "worth it." There is no argument (from me at least) about that tactical decision.
My larger point is that for-profit pharma/healthcare is not a healthy marketplace (... or at best, it's an immature one). In the not-so-distant past (in America, up until the Civil War or thereabouts), firefighting was mostly privatized (meaning not government-run) [0], and brigades would compete (literally sometimes fighting in the streets, covering the hydrant to impede rival brigades, etc.) to claim the prize of the insurance payout for saving a building [1], which doesn't really serve the interests of the victims of fires.
I think the incentives of for-profit firefighters are not all that dissimilar from the incentives of modern pharma companies today (i.e. pay us to save your building from this fire, vs pay us to research this vaccine), and I would hope to evolve this pharma industry and this marketplace (of "demand" for life/health, vs "supply" of pharma research and resources) into something more mature and with fewer perverse incentives in the long-run.
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#United...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Modern...