The claim that the cost of manufacture is less than 1% of the sales price ignores the R&D costs.  On average it costs over a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market (and that's not including costs incurred by universities etc.).

If you expect a company to produce that drug they have to be able to recoup development costs as well as covering manufacturing costs - and they've got a relatively narrow window in which to do that because once their patent expires others can produce generic versions.