I agree with you that you've hit on a major theme! One of Hammond's major flaws is cutting corners and spending too little, and the corrupting effect of money is a big deal in the book. I just don't agree that it's the primary theme.
The problem is that much of the book doesn't revolve around Hammond's cost-saving measures.
The first big chunk of the book is a description of a series of random actions by many different people that combine to cause the dinosaur threat to go unidentified. Midwives across Costa Rica mark reptile deaths as SIDS to avoid getting in trouble. A key reptile researcher is on vacation. The infectious disease specialists use the tentative identification of the reptile as a lizard, which the Costa Rican officials mistakenly interpret as a positive identification. All of these random events combine to cause the threat to go overlooked, and none of them are directly related to money at all. If he were trying to make a point about money, this part of the book would make no sense. The point is to illustrate how unpredictable the real world is in comparison to the idealized version that exists on paper.
And again, the primary antagonist's downfall and death is not driven by cost-saving measures, it's driven by an unexpected weather event. You don't kill off your antagonist in such an arbitrary way unless that arbitrariness is the main point of the story.
The problem is that much of the book doesn't revolve around Hammond's cost-saving measures.
The first big chunk of the book is a description of a series of random actions by many different people that combine to cause the dinosaur threat to go unidentified. Midwives across Costa Rica mark reptile deaths as SIDS to avoid getting in trouble. A key reptile researcher is on vacation. The infectious disease specialists use the tentative identification of the reptile as a lizard, which the Costa Rican officials mistakenly interpret as a positive identification. All of these random events combine to cause the threat to go overlooked, and none of them are directly related to money at all. If he were trying to make a point about money, this part of the book would make no sense. The point is to illustrate how unpredictable the real world is in comparison to the idealized version that exists on paper.
And again, the primary antagonist's downfall and death is not driven by cost-saving measures, it's driven by an unexpected weather event. You don't kill off your antagonist in such an arbitrary way unless that arbitrariness is the main point of the story.