People still bring in bad faith arguments about private companies funding research or replication crisis. Sure these are big issues in current scientific research. There is no denying that.
While there might be an intuitive sense of less public research means money saved, there is no data or research (duh!) showing the impact of reduced public research.
From what we have seen so far this will make things worse - because for one private research is going to biased. It happens today but public research can counter that. Later there will be no defense. Like MAHA report making up BS sources using AI to push its agenda.
The irony in all of this is - the man pushing ivermectin during a pandemic - one of the biggest replication issue if not the big one - is telling others how to do research and people are defending him.
As the saying goes, reality has a well-established (left|liberal) bias...