Insulin was discovered by four Canadians, who famously sold the patent for $1 each to the University of Toronto—enabling the public manufacture of the new miracle drug for people with diabetes. That was in 1921, and for 65 years insulin was produced in Canada at a publicly owned laboratory—Connaught Laboratories—and distributed across the country at…
This isn’t a case where it needed to be sold, it was just short-term selfish thinking.
However you are perhaps correct that for a systemic problem, a systemic solution is needed not some cheap workaround as with what I was suggesting.