In a market-oriented society, it's unethical to put in place rules that divert capital and talent way from the development of lifesaving medical care. (And the half-ass refrain of accepting a market economy generally, but making an exception for medical care as being "too important to leave to the market" makes no sense. Unless you tamp down on the flow of capital to other industries, designating some areas as "too important" to leave to the market will simply cause capital to flee to, e.g. dating websites, leaving the "too important" industries as ghettos.)

The ethical thing to do is constructing a system that maximizes the amount of lifesaving medical care at minimum cost. Doing that requires acknowledging market forces. Scientists and engineers aren't any more altruistic than anyone else. These days the incoming classes at investment banks are full of physics, biology, and chemistry majors that could easily have gotten a PhD and went to go work for NIH. In the healthcare space, there is at least the potential for making a lot of money by doing a startup with the hopes of getting acquired by one of the big pharma companies. If you take that option away--if developing lifesaving medical care is a field that nets you at best a GS-scale government job--talent and capital are going to go develop dating apps instead.