This is my pet peeve. If you are going to regurgitate a talking point, please regurgitate the _right_ talking point. They spend more on marketing and administration. You know, useless stuff like HR, IT, etc. What company need stupid stuff like that?
If you're going to make this complaint you should show how much companies spend on admin costs. Clearly the parent comment was making the point that they dislike that some [1] companies spend double on marketing than they do on R&D. I'm sure they also spend money on other essential services (they probably by pens), that's not all that illuminating unless you say how much.
1.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
People may be surprised, but drugs, even really good drugs, need to do some marketing. You can argue over what level of marketing is appropriate, but if you had a great drug and didn't do marketing, you'd take a huge hit to revenue.
Also, pharma marketing is very human resource heavy. You need to hire reps to visit offices. That's not cheap.
