This is utterly false. Agencies like NIH, BARDA, and NSF fund early-stage biomedical R&D by providing SBIR/STTR grants to biotech and pharma startups. They also fund basic research and clinical trials as well as translational studies.
There is the Orphan Drug Tax Credit and R&D Tax Credit. Also, access to NIH labs, etc.
There is a whole plethora of funding. Moderna’s mRNA platform was heavily backed by NIH and BARDA even before COVID.