Compared with other countries, the US is again seeing exorbitant prices for a medicine—even one it helped develop.
In the current COVID-19 booster campaign, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is paying around $82 for each dose of Moderna’s 2023–2024 updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine for its program to provide vaccine for the uninsured. That price is a little over three times the $26 per dose the federal government paid for the last updated booster, which was exclusively distributed by the government.
The price hike marks the vaccine’s move from federal distribution to the commercial market. Moderna and rival manufacturer Pfizer raised the US list price of their COVID-19 vaccines by roughly 400 percent. (Moderna’s is listed at $128 and Pfizer’s is $115).
The price hike is particularly remarkable from Moderna, which developed its COVID-19 vaccine with substantial assistance from the federal government. It developed the vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and got $1.7 billion in federal grant money for its clinical development.
In a March Congressional hearing on the vaccine’s pricing, Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel—who became a billionaire during the pandemic—unabashedly defended quadrupling the price. Specifically, Bancel downplayed the US government’s contribution and suggested the earlier pricing was actually a discount.
“We were under no obligation to do so, but, recognizing the US government’s investments, our company decided to provide the government with a discount,” Bancel said of the $26 per dose pricing.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who chaired the hearing, fired back, saying: “This vaccine would not exist without NIH’s partnership and expertise, and the substantial investment of the taxpayers of this country. And here is the ‘thank you’ that the taxpayers of this country received from Moderna for that huge investment: They are thanking the taxpayers of the United States by proposing to quadruple the price of the COVID vaccine.”
Now, adding insult to injury, the European Union may end up paying three times less than the US for the same vaccine. According to a report by the Financial Times, EU health authorities are in the process of negotiating a vaccine supply deal with Moderna—and, so far, the discussed price per dose is just 25 euros, or about $26, which Bancel had suggested previously was a discounted price for the US government. Though the EU’s price is not final, the discussed price in the negotiation is substantially lower than what the US is already forking over for the update shots.
The news, while perhaps enraging, is not surprising. During March’s Congressional hearing, Bancel hinted that the US would not get a good deal on the shots. Sanders asked him the question directly.
“The United States—the people in our country—pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs in general… will you at least tell us today that the price you are charging for the vaccine will be lower than what other countries around the world are paying?” Sanders implored.
Bancel eventually replied: “I cannot say the price will be lower than other countries.”
If only the U.S. had, say, a single-payer system with the legal ability to negotiate drug prices…
Nah. It’d never work for some reason or other.
Right?
“ThE Us HaS tHe BeSt HeAlThCaRe iN tHe WoRlD”
Well, if nobody can access it without immediately taking on a crippling amount of debt then it doesn’t matter how good the quality of that healthcare is. The system is fundamentally broken.
Amazingly it is rarely in the top ten for quality, while consistently being the most expensive, often by twice the next most expensive country.
You’re calculating things wrong. The US is typically number one in healthcare if you only look at the top 1%, and clearly they are all that matter.
But if we had socialized medicine, I might have to wait a few weeks to get that elective procedure done. That’s unacceptable.
/s obviously
As for the quadrupling of the US’s discount price, Bancel argued that the simple bulk orders for the government were wholly different in nature than the messiness of the commercial market—and that messiness costs extra. During the pandemic, Moderna dealt with one customer (the government) that committed to paying for a set number of doses regardless of whether they made it into arms. And the company delivered those doses to a limited number of federal warehouses. Now, it will have thousands of customers, requiring the company to deal with complex distribution logistics, and to take on the financial risk of manufacturing more doses than are purchased. Moderna will also switch from selling multi-dose vials to single-dose vials, which it sees as more suited for the commercial market. “This is not the same product,” Bancel argued, and the quadrupled price reflects that, he suggested.
In the article linked in that opening paragraph about his testimony, HE MADE THE CASE FOR SINGLE PAYER. Clearly and unequivocally.
I never said he didn’t.
Why…would you take this as a comment against YOU?I was piggybacking off what you said to continue pointing to the absurdity? This newly minted billionaire pharma CEO stepped all over his own Bullshit to make the case. He wasn’t purposefully making the case, he was trying to justify the nonsense of what they’re doing and accidentally said “if we had single payer, it’d be cheaper.” While defending their absurd profits. Wasn’t a slight against you, friend.
Their federal funding should be revoked and they should be audited every year by the SEC, also separately be audited for HR violations, and be a hotspot for any investigations based on whistleblower reports to various agencies imo.
They want to make a trillion dollars off a vaccine that was bought and paid for many times over by the federal government. They had been trying to find other treatments for years in other avenues with no success. They don’t seem to be bringing much new innovation either, just milking this one treatment with minor tweaks between one strain and the next.
Horrible bullshit, typical pharma.
The US by no means paid for the Moderna vaccine. They provided money to push it through clinical trials, but they didn’t fund the development.
Significantly more than that. About 99% of the development was paid for by the US government.
Yeah, the information in the article is basically meaningless. It doesn’t matter how much the government gave Moderna if there’s no mention of the total development costs (which I have been unable to find the actual numbers for).
The article also confirms that the claim is wrong, but they take a super roundabout way of getting there. The claim was that $2.5b was the total cost of development, the truth is that the $2.5b was for both development and to purchase vaccines
Pretty much every drug developed in the US has some amount of government spending behind it, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the government pays for all of it or that the pharma companies don’t deserve to make a profit on their products.
From what I recall reading a year or two ago, funding was pretty much 1:1 with their development costs for mRNA research over the past decade. And even if it is not 1:1, it is a hell of a lot different then the government only throwing them the $80 million or so it costs to get through trials. The $2.5 billion was not part of the purchase agreements with the US government. That agreement gave the US government the right to purchase vaccines at $16 per dose which was not too different from the EU’s price of $19 per dose.
Yes, most drugs being developed have some government funding. Moderna’s vaccine is different because it was overwhelmingly funded by the government. Pfizer charged similar rates for their vaccine but refused government funding for it. Any drug that receives government funding should be severely limited on the profit they can make on it especially if it was largely paid for by the government.
Just another article summing up that the people who run pharmaceutical companies are straight up fucking evil.
Its just the US voters who are stupid that they sat up the system to allow such bahaviour.
Not just allows it, incentives it.
why couldn’t the u.s. government just negotiate with the e.u. to buy our doses from the them and then ‘re-import’?
Because they companies will include stuff in the contracts that forbids giving or trading it away.
We had the issue when we tried yo donate vaccine doses thst were about to expire, but had to wait for the company to say yes to that.
Time to eminent-domain the intellectual property.
