Many of those on the right are just ideologically opposed to government spending on anything (that isn't the military). It is often a win to get them to provisionally admit that, maybe, possibly, ANY government spending on research is useful. So "give more money to the FDA" is where they stop listening.

On the left, there is often a dogmatic refusal to even try to understand how markets and incentives work. They tend to inhabit a fantasy world where all humans are, or should be, pure altruists. If you think it is just pharma that responds to monetary incentives, you'd be dead wrong. Publicly-funded institutions LOVE this system as well because the typical endpoint is that when one of their researchers develops a candidate, the patent is sold to pharma...BUT the institute retains a right to, say, 5% of profits.

Why not just allow drug imports from Canada and India? It is because we -- meaning the American consumer and taxpayer -- are subsidizing drug development for the entire world. The current system in the USA, bad as it is for American consumers, develops the majority of new drugs for the whole world. I have no doubt that if you allow foreign drug imports without other reform in the system, you actually will see less drug development.