Rub. You bring up a good point. Clinical trial sites generally expect to be well compensated for running the trials. For many, it is a major profit center for them, and they don't want the public to know that. They often lie saying they are just breaking even.

Gild has much more money to pay these guys. A good option for BARDA, rather than giving a large block grant to a couple of companies, is give 100 mil to each of the 20 most promising therapeutics, with stipulations that 85% get spent on clinical trial costs. That may avoid the chicken and egg we have here.
--the Gov wants data in order to give the company money, but the company needs money to gather the data.