It is sort of like the idea that there is a carburetor out there that would give cars 100 mpg but the oil companies bought them up and won’t let anyone sell them or that they have discovered a way to make cold fusion work but the evil oil companies block that as well. The primary reason for believing these things seems to be that people want to believe them because in their mind this is exactly the sort of evil thing the evil oil companies would do.

The reason we treat symptoms more often than we cure disease is because most of the time that is all we know how to do. The other thing we are getting pretty good at is prevention. That is why we have immunization, another thing the people who believe pharmaceutical are evil tend to oppose, which does better than cure the disease it keeps you from getting sick to start with.
Our bodies are very complex chemical factories and it is much easier to tweak the chemical soup than it is to tweak the factory. Take allergies, genetics play a key role in how susceptible you are to allergies so to “cure” the problem they would need to change your genetic code. We are working on ways to that but it is a long way off. Instead we find that we can suppress part of the immune system that is over acting.

The basic idea that we would have a better health care system if we drove the profit out is naive and shows a profound lack of understanding of how humans and human society works. Investment requires risk and for humans to want to take on risk requires that there be some promise of reward. So the "no profit" is good mindset first believes that the doctors and scientist who develop new treatments are a bunch of heartless money grabbers who let millions of people suffer because it helps their bottom line then they turn around and believe they can get them to take risk and makes investments without the hope of profit. To think that a group of people only ever behave in their own best interest and that you can then build a system that requires those same people to act against their own self interest is bit beyond naive. Build a system of new gain and you will only attract those that can accept no risk. Who the hell wants the healthcare system run like the DMV?

Now there are a multitude of problems with our healthcare system but our health industry keeping people sick so they can make money off of them is not the problem.