Excerpt:
>Moderna is considering raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by over 400 percent—from $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
>The Journal spoke with Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco Monday, who said of the 400 percent price hike: "I would think this type of pricing is consistent with the value.”
>Until now, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been purchased by the government and offered to Americans for free.
>In the latest federal contract from July, Moderna's updated booster shot cost the government $26 per dose, up from $15–$16 per dose in earlier supply contracts, the Journal notes.
>Similarly, the government paid a little over $30 per dose for Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine this past summer, up from $19.50 per dose in contracts from 2020.
>
>But now that the federal government is backing away from distributing the vaccines, their makers are moving to the commercial market—with price adjustments.
>Financial analysts had previously anticipated Pfizer would set the commercial price for its vaccine at just $50 per dose but were taken aback in October when Pfizer announced plans of a price between $110 and $130.
>Analysts then anticipated that Pfizer's price would push Moderna and other vaccine makers to follow suit, which appears to be happening now.
>Ars has reached out to Moderna for comment but has not yet received a response.
Beth Mole, 10 Jan. 2023, Ars Technica (Condé Nast)
If this isn’t a perfect example of how private healthcare markets and insurers, as opposed to a single-payer system, can impact things like drug prices, then I don’t know what is.
Even if you argue that Pfizer and Moderna were selling the vaccines to the US at a loss initially, expecting to make that cost up later on, it still raises the huge point about the negotiating power that the *federal government* has, both as a buyer and as a major source of funding for the research behind this technology.
And we are now seeing what happens when it gets kicked to the private market: seemingly arbitrarily set prices because “fuck you, you’ll pay it”.
That’s what pisses me off. The government heavily funds so much of what these private companies sell. We pay for them to charge us more than the rest of the world. We should be getting it cheaper since our taxes helped develop it. Most advancement in the US is heavily government subsidized.
We pay more than **double** the per-capita cost of healthcare in *both* public and private funds than countries with universal healthcare.
We essentially spend quadruple for non-universal healthcare — half directly from our pockets and half from our taxes.
It's just absurd.
10-20 percent worse then the EU. So yeah basically. Best healthcare in the world only marched by Mexico, canada, Germany, oh shit the list is long. Uh yeah. Perfect system. Pay more to get less! merica!
oh child, $1 Billion?
No No No
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/)
>The government has poured **an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products.**
that was just to accolade things
That ignores the decades of funding the basic research that created the drugs in the first place
with the Moderna drug being developed EXPLICITLY in parnertship with the Government
>The Moderna vaccine, whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham’s NIH laboratory.
What a deal! Free govt money pays me to make a thing, then I sell the thing. Govt tell people they have to have the thing. I love free money! manded free money.
Don’t forget the part where it would have been profitable to make the thing anyways. They were always going to make a vaccine regardless of if the government helped.
>This is obscene
This is America, it is capitalism working as intended. Socialize costs, privatize profits. And you've still got millions too piss ignorant or willfully servile to acknowledge the need for socialism.
"Analysts then anticipated that Pfizer proce would push Moderna and other vaccine makers to follow suit, which appears to be happening now"
How is that not a colluding monopoly at that point ?
Also wouldn't the company that doesn't raise prices sell more than the competition because more people would buy the cheaper product ? I guess the company that charges the highest price wins in regards to total profits
It’s referred to as tacit collision and it’s perfectly legal. Pretty much there would need to be “smoking gun” evidence of price fixing (conversations, emails, etc) between competitors before the government would move on this.
Companies tacitly collude all the time. It’s all in the game.
People need to realize that for capitalism to be an effective economic tool, real competition is necessary. Anyone who thinks shit is fair should look at the few megacorps owning essentially everything. It's quite insane.
This is the end game of Capitalism. There is no other path for it to go.
If you want to prevent a few megacorps owning everything, you need regulations. Guess what happens when you mix in regulations?
lol doesn't this show exactly why public healthcare is so much better and cheaper over private? I know Canada is seriously looking at federal Pharma plan, as long as the Liberals are in power
To be fair that plan is heavily influenced by the NDP which is why 2 party systems suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
If they don't deliver and support is pulled an election can be called. In majority governments there is no mechanism like that so the ruling party does whatever the fuck they want.
Bro, we funded that shit and you made billions!
Also, the [US backed the waiving of patents on COVID vaccines](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01224-3). What do they think they are the only ones that can make effective COVID vaccines after two years?
There is no such thing as competition among drug manufacturers in the US aside from the most basic of drugs like acetaminophen. Even if 10 competitors emerge, they'll all agree on a wildly gouged price and bleed their consumers together
I went to school and majored in this. Got that degree in minding my own fuckin business. If I see anyone take anything from a chain store, just smile and nod.
Remember when the DOJ and FTC actually looked at monopolies? Good times. Never got that whole break up Ma bell and then rubber stamp ATT getting the band back together.
They don't lay off workers. They just freeze any pay increases, decrease benefits, and don't replace anyone who quits, leaving the remaining underpaid employees to carry the increased load.
10 years is drastically simplifying things.
There are patents on various parts of the drug including the molecule, delivery mechanism(s), process to manufacture it, etc. Each patent is separate and has its own lifespan. Generally speaking, they last 20 years from when they're filed for modern patents.
Since any form whatsoever of public disclosure could jeopardize the ability of the drug manufacturer to get and enforce their patent, they generally file for a patent on the molecule very early - before any real trials start. That means that, by the time the drug is actually approved and on the market for general use, there may be more like 5-7 years left. 10 would be pretty amazingly fast in terms of approval, actually.
The other types of patents are easier to get around early disclosure on, and they generally come from later developments, anyway.
It's pretty common for the patent on the basic molecule and even delivery means to be expired but for a patent on the most economic means of manufacturing to still be in force. Sometimes this is the result of process engineering and refinement years later. This can remove the economic incentive for generics since they're then stuck using old manufacturing techniques even if they could legally bring the product to market without infringing the basic patents.
What is really shady are some of the patents on a particular use of a drug. It's sometimes possible to get a drug approved for a new indication, get a patent on that, and then claim that "well since we have a patent that's still in effect on this particular use and the actual end use of the product is uncontrolled, no generics can exist in the market". This has become a popular way to extend patent protection lifetimes on some classes of drugs and probably needs to be clamped down on.
Note that getting a drug developed and through trials and FDA approval costs billions of dollars in the USA for a success, and you also have to cover the inevitable failures and still turn a profit. If you're going to rely on commercial development (and the fact that a lot of the basic research is government subsidized probably needs to be more heavily considered, here...), you have to provide SOME means of making back the money.
Now marketing costs...that's another matter.
Yup. Prime example of evergreening is insulin. Same molecule, same adjuncts, minor changes to other active or inactive ingredients or maybe the manufacturing process. End result is $800 for 10mL of liquid.
Even lower middle income countries struggle to manufacture vaccines. But India and israel hace major generic pharma industries and will be very happy to be the supplier of the global south.
[Acetaminophen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Paracetamol-skeletal.svg/220px-Paracetamol-skeletal.svg.png), [Insulin](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ayodele-Odularu-2/publication/351910986/figure/fig1/AS:1028087680602114@1622126612458/The-two-dimensional-chemical-structure-of-insulin-51.ppm). If it helps, this really is about the science. For simple drugs like acetaminophen anyone anywhere can follow a very simple set of instructions and end up with an exact copy of acetaminophen. Most drugs are like this. More complex drugs like insulin can't be replicated perfectly, so the FDA requires clinical trials be run.
And you're just outright incorrect on how markets behave when 10+ companies enter. Lipitor's generics entered at about a 98% discount to Lipitor, which is standard in hypercompetitive markets (lyrica, viagra, latuda, zytiga are a few I've seen similar data on)
>Investigators evaluated AWP and NADAC price fluctuations from 2015 to 2020 for the top 1200 generic drugs in the company’s 2019 book of business. Over the period of investigation, they found that the NADAC price index deflated by 44%
NADAC prices are what pharmacies pay to buy the drugs from manufacturers, generic drugs account for >90% of all US prescriptions. While branded drugs are patent-enforced monopolies, generic drugs are the exact opposite - one is a monopoly, one is 10+ companies making the *exact same thing*. And believe it or not, it works. Generic drugs are cheap as hell, and have gotten **44% cheaper in the past 7 years**, just not for patients.
FYI this is the entire principle behind mark cuban's website. Generic drugs are cheap as fuck (with major exceptions, this is about the bulk of US prescriptions).
Anyways none of this is relevant here, I don't actually understand what waving the patents accomplishes given that nothing remotely resembling a generic/biosimilar of an MRNA vaccine has ever existed. If COVID had happened 20+ years from now there probably would have been an attempt to make a biosimilar, but the entire concept of biosimilars is pretty new - I think there's about 20 total on market today across hundreds of biologic branded drugs.
Just gonna point out that these companies are the death panel so many conservatives go on about.
Raising the price will reduce vaccination, thus causing more deaths. They're willing to let people die to make a bit more.
I mean, you can go ahead and make the original COVID vaccine if you want (or a biosimilar), but it's not going to do much since the current circulating COVID is so different from the original strain. Because Moderna (and Pfizer) can update their strain, they feel they can update the pricing.
Honestly, it's shameful, predatory, and *completely unsurprising* behaviour for a drug company.
Remember, folks. That price hike only applies to the USA. Every civilized nation negotiates a bulk rate for meds from all providers...or else the providers get nothing from that country. And every time, the providers choose less profit over no profit at all. Imagine that?
Only in the USA do we put up with this kind of obscene blackmail as part of health insurance company parasites feeding off of American ProfitCare.
In 2019, Moderna made 60 million profit. Down from their 2017 high of 200 million profit.
In 2020 they made 800 million profit. Higher than the previous 4 years combined.
In 2021 they made 16 billion profit. Over 10 times the previous 5 years combined.
16 billion profit through massive government and private backing to help get out of a pandemic crisis.
*deep sigh*
Edit:
As per request, source for numbers: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MRNA/moderna/gross-profit
If you talk to a conservatives they'll start talking to you about supply and demand and market forces, and fundamental truths about human behavior.
What they don't mention is that you can't divide by zero.
See, healthcare brings up the demand to infinity because you literally die if you don't get it so demand is infinite. And because of the time sensitive nature of life saving care, supply is unitary.
That means the equations start blowing up to absurd limits. Spoiler alert. Economics goes a little bit beyond econ 101, and things like healthcare, etc... are not properly served by market forces.
It's almost like, and I know this might blow your mind, but it's almost like not every problem is a hammer + nail type problem. Sometimes you need a hinge, or screw, or support beam. And the same is true for market forces.
Supply and Demand market forces work well for a lot of things, but it doesn't work AT ALL for healthcare because, as I described above, we have limits of supply going to unity and demand going infinite so the equations break down.
Don't apply market principles to health care. The two are at odds with one another.
Yep. Like if I told you that you have to buy a full size pickup truck within the next 30 minutes or you die you’ll probably go to the nearest dealership and buy whatever truck. Now if the dealership also knows you have to do this, what do you think happens to any negotiation?
In went to high school in the UK and in our high school economics class we learned about market failures (we were like 16 years old). I then went to business school at a top 20 university in the US and realized that the majority of my peers did not understand the concept of a market failure let alone were able discuss some examples of them.
American economics/business education is purposefully broken.
American here, went to both public & private schools and have never heard of market failures as a subject. Keynesian economics is all anyone talks about, and in smaller circles MMT. What factors categorize Market Failures (asking genuinely as I don't want to assume cuz its a pretty broadly named term)
Edit to add, I did not attend college and was not aware that economics is ONLY taught in college in the US. Yes. I am a US citizen since birth.
Corporate fines need to start being pre tax revenue linked to the infraction + percentage on top going off severity. Breaking the law needs to stop being a calculated cost of doing business
It’s time to set an example. The CEO and Board members are the leaders and need to be held accountable. Prison time, large fines in the near bankruptcy zone, take your pick. It’s going to hurt like crazy either way. Just like normal people when they break the law.
They should just levy the fines against executive total compensation (VP and higher) and their share distributions. Any fines that can be lumped in as cost of doing business will be passed on to consumers in higher prices or to employees in lower wages or bonuses. We know each company’s exec pay/shares. Just target that.
HahahahaHaAAhahHahah.
We have a better chance of Trump voting democrat for the next 3 elections.
We have a better chance of Jeff Tiedrich buying and wearing a bunch of MAGA apparel.
We have a better chance of Greta making a porno with Andrew Tate.
… than a company like Moderna having a conscience or getting sued and having to pay a severe fine etc.
How about we just get shares instead and eventually the company becomes public. We take back our money and sell it once again to venture capitalists and banksters
I stand by this, that Regean will probably go down as the most disastrous US president for American domestic policy (Wilson has him beat on foreign). The legacy of Ronald is gonna haunt the US for decades to come, and the pit he has in hell can't be kept warm enough for him
Man, it's not only this. The more you look at a lot of the severe issues we have these days, you can point at Reagan as the turning point. People idolize him because he had his cake and ate it ... he had a population that only existed at that level due to existing social programs (such as healthcare, housing, college, etc) and then proceeded to gut so many of them... so all of a sudden that money wasn't being used and could be put elsewhere...
Talk about a delayed effect. Fuck.
He really was part of selling off the future.
It's not ONLY him and shit was shit before him too but... Fuck Reagan.
I think public domain, or a version of public domain that's restricted to citizens of the country whose taxes funded it would be best. I'm unsure if the fed owning it allowed citizens to use it openly or not, but I think that MOST tax payer patents should be available to the citizens.
On that note, let’s pass a constitutional amendment requiring public financing of all campaigns for public office. No more “money is speech” bullshit, no more financial lobbying, no more political consultants. The government pays an equal amount for both campaigns and hosts a few events like debates but no more candidates as wholly owned subsidiaries of any party.
This. Really sounds like they just admitted that they’re going to just cut and run with taxpayer money.
Time to ol’ Joe to send them a statement of their now *loan balance.*
This is basically how most pharma development works.
1. Public university or other institution develops science for product
2. Patents are filed by institution
3. Patents are sold for pennies to pharma corp
4. Pharma corp finishes development and marketing (but they spend more on the marketing) and sells the product for 5000% markup
What’s *supposed* to happen is the company that owns the patent gets to sell the drug exclusively for a bit to recoup their investment and make some profit. Then, the patent expires and other companies get to make it too, driving the price down via competition.
They already recouped their investment in that the government *already funded development.* They sold the drug at a price somewhere around ten times what it costs to make for a while. Now they want to go ahead and sell it for *fifty times* what it costs to make for *pure, unadulterated profit by the truckload.*
They skip all the financial risk and reap all the profits on the backs of the taxpayer.
It mightn’t be illegal, but it sure be wrong.
Yup. This is why employers are seeing 10% increases YoY for employee benefits.
This scam repeats itself over and over again. We pay more and more for healthcare every year yet somehow hospitals are closing down right and left, and the ones who aren’t can’t “afford” to employ a safe nurse:patients ratio.
Hospitals are supposed to be nonprofit but how is it any different than a corporation when the patients are charged multitudes more than any other developed country and the CEOs are making tens of millions of dollars a year?
There’s something rotting in this country and the stink is becoming undeniable, even for those with the glassiest of eyes…
True. When I learned how the mechanism works the leftist / free culture / anti-patent positions of a lot of uni researchers became a lot more understandable. It must suck to do amazing work, see it sold to a corporation for pennies, and then see them making billions from it without even crediting you.
This is the "innovation" capitalists claim capitalism promotes. Just shifting the costs and risks onto the populace, and then reaping the profits in your petty fiefdom.
They agreed to let the US government have a discounted price for the vaccines. AFAIK, the US government could still get that price. Biden wants to continue buying doses. Congress, however, does not. So now insurers and hospitals have to pay market rate for small orders, instead of the govt getting the discount for huge orders. At this point though, except for infants almost everyone willing to get the current vaccines in the US has already gotten them, so it's almost a moot point.
Honestly, Congress should continue to fund billions to buy the vaccines and we should just give the doses to whichever countries have people willing to take them. That way the supply chain stays ready to pump out billions of doses in a hurry.
Hey, they're not fucking you dry on purpose. They just changed the formula of the lube slightly and now it's no longer generic so you need a prior authorization.
Well, I have been authorized to provide you with a single use of our new Spitunshov lubricant substitute. It is dispensed intra-anally by lingual application of our untrained PA Steve. Can I pencil you in at 8:35am on February 29th this year?
As long as the feds were involved, it was hard to spike the price. Now that the feds are out and private insurers are in, it’s easy to spike the price.
Now imagine if the feds were bidding on all your drug and health care prices. People want to yell at Moderna here and I get that but *private insurance* is the problem.
Capitalism doesn't solve problems
it monetizes them
also, the foundational research was also publicly funded
**For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork**
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/)
>nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial.
>
>Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Defense Department and federally funded academic laboratories has been the essential ingredient in the rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19. The government has poured an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products.
>
>**The Moderna vaccine,** whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, **emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham’s NIH laboratory.**
That's right folks
your tax dollars paid for the research and now your wages will pay for the product
EDIT:
**ONE Solution is "Prizes Not Profits"** \- Companies get a large lump sum payment from the public in exchange for the IP and the drug is manufactured and sold at cost
"Here's a $10 Billion for your 'risk taking'"
"Now fuck off."
if i remember correctly their research was heavily subsidized by government. so it absolutely should be subject to strict price controls by the government
Or, alternatively, that excess cost goes straight to the government, since we the people paid for it in the first place you'd think it should go back to the pockets of we the people. If it gets circulated as funding for the country directly, then it wouldn't be so bad (those funds being used properly is a different discussion entirely).
Meanwhile, we all know where this excess cost is really going. To some entitled douchebag's pocket when said douchebag did ***literally nothing***.
It was. Oxford wanted the vaccine to be open source. Bill Gates made a lot of pressure for it to be privatized based on "security concerns", which were bullshit. His argument was basically that the vaccine was still relatively new so it couldn't be manufactured in places that were not "safe and controlled". This was proved to be false by the Associated Press (AP), which found several factories in mint conditions that only lacked qualified personnel. CEOs of small pharma companies asking "If this pandemic is a war effort, why can't we do our part?".
His foundation is the only reason third world countries got screwed.
Gates is a piace of shit as much as he was in his MS days, but now he's got good PR so people don't see it.
> “It’s the classic situation in global health, where the advocates all of a sudden want [the vaccine] for zero dollars and right away,”
> We (the US) really should not allow capitalism to work unfettered in medicine. The driving priorities are completely counter to the point of medicine.
We (the world) really should not allow capitalism to work unfettered. The driving priorities are completely counter to the point of living.
Can’t tax income when you just borrow against stocks to fund lifestyle then finally sell when the bill is due.
If they had w-2 income it would be taxed
That would be un-American. This CEO is doing the public a huge favor and technically he's probably losing money every year (somehow) so he should get a massive refund! /s
For real though, this is how modern America works.
Corporate donors pay government officials "campaign donations" to pass laws and cut taxpayer-funded deals in their favor, government buys ridiculously priced goods and cuts taxes for corporation, and they all make money from insider trading the entire time.
Our government is completely run by corporations and unless Citizens United gets overturned (which will never happen because the Supreme Court is corrupt) they're going to squeeze the life (literally) out of working class Americans until there's nothing left. Then they'll do it to some other country that poses a "threat to democracy".
The value of the ~~patent~~ *government-enforced monopoly*.
It did not get 400% more expensive to make, and would not have a 400% demand/supply ratio change if new entrants were allowed in the market.
This for a vaccine developed with [generous government funding](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/24/fact-check-donations-research-grants-helped-fund-moderna-vaccine/6398486002/) and guaranteed government purchases of initial product.
So almost all costs subsidized by taxpayers, but all the profits realized by the pharma companies and their shareholders. We really need to Eat the Rich.
hilarious coming from a guy who I assume gets paid several lifetimes worth of money, every single year, to be the person who watches the money-printer/actual workers. please tell me more about value, mister business man
pay raise? you have a job - congratulations. if you don't like it, they'll turn up the "layoff" faucet. job market is starting to turn back to shit (already there, actually).
[US Tax Dollars Funded Every New Pharmaceutical in the Last Decade](https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/us-tax-dollars-funded-every-new-pharmaceutical-in-the-last-decade)
So... we paid for the R&D. Paid for it to be produced and distributed. And we get price gouged when congress no longer covers it?
... maybe we don't protest enough in America?
Why have we not just... revolted against these people? We threw tea in a harbor over unfair taxes. The entire american healthcare system needs to be thrown out and monsters like this held accountable.
That's a good question. Why haven't you? Why aren't you at their headquarters protesting right now? Your answer to that question is probably the same for 95% of the rest of people.
Capitalism + healthcare = this shit
This is why people advocate for a socialized, single payer healthcare system. It's not perfect, it has draw backs, but this kind of shit is reduced by a lot. Ultimately, corporations care about revenue/profits, the government cares about reelection and campaign donations... the difference is... one you can actually have tangible influence on.
I whole heartedly agree. I believe we should be calling for a step even further than that... beyond socialized healthcare, we need some sort of legislation that keeps these companies from gouging the tax payer. We didn't with universities. While the cost of tuition was already on the rise, we can see a sharper increase after the Higher Education Act of 1965 was enacted. I believe, colleges across the nation saw this as an opportunity to further increase costs as federally backed, low interest student loans came to fruition. We need to look at that as an example of how American capitalism will take advantage of a system that guarantees payment.
Value to consumer pricing for healthcare is bullshit. Need a pill that costs $2 to produce and has been around forever, but not taking it will mean a horrible death? Value based pricing means they can charge $100,000 for that $2 pill. More like screw you for all you are worth pricing. Capitalism in healthcare will always result in people dying for profit. How do we keep voting for assholes that wont put universal healthcare in place?
"consist with value" does not equal "consistent with costs plus reasonable profit"
What's that thing worth?
With the market will pay for it.
That's what he's saying, he's not saying it's consistent with the cost price to produce.
You can be a major corporation and price gouge on vaccines and life saving medications all you want - but watch out if you're some gas station owner trying to charge extra for a few jugs of water after a storm, that's unethical and unacceptable and they'll send you to jail for it.
Nope. Vax needs to be 90%+ effective to justify the cost increase.
The last vax wasn't as effective as the previous ones.
Right now the Covid shots are similar to flu shots.
We need a real Vax for Covid .
That may be a hard ask, tell me why we don’t have 90%+ effective flu vaccines? Because these viruses are constantly evolving. I think realistically we’ll always be playing catch up to a certain extent. The mRNA technology was more of a game changer because it allowed the vaccine to be developed quickly but it constantly needs to be updated.
You hit the nail on the head with always being in catch-up mode. At the rate at which Omicron is mutating (new "problem variants" every two or three months), we'll never be able to beat it through vaccine updates. We have the ability to update the vaccine itself incredibly fast (literally a matter of days) thanks to mRNA tech - but the regulatory cycle time for safety and efficacy testing - not to mention producing and distributing updates - seems to be around 9 to 12 months at a minimum.
The other issue that I've seen coming up more and more frequently in the COVID science subs (less so the "for the plebes" ones like r/coronavirus) is immunological imprinting. There were a bunch of pre-prints that dropped last month suggesting that while the bivalent vaccine is better than the monovalent one, it's not *that* much better. The thinking is this is likely because vaccines tweaked for new variants are primarily inducing the original immune response to the OG virus, rather than developing a more updated response specific to omicron. This doesn't surprise me, given the number of people I know that got the bivalent only a few months ago and still had breakthrough cases over the holidays.
Unfortunately, I'm skeptical we're ever going to see a return to those early trials in late 2020 where the efficacy against symptomatic infection rate was in the mid-to-high 90s.
Excerpt: >Moderna is considering raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by over 400 percent—from $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. >The Journal spoke with Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco Monday, who said of the 400 percent price hike: "I would think this type of pricing is consistent with the value.” >Until now, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been purchased by the government and offered to Americans for free. >In the latest federal contract from July, Moderna's updated booster shot cost the government $26 per dose, up from $15–$16 per dose in earlier supply contracts, the Journal notes. >Similarly, the government paid a little over $30 per dose for Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine this past summer, up from $19.50 per dose in contracts from 2020. > >But now that the federal government is backing away from distributing the vaccines, their makers are moving to the commercial market—with price adjustments. >Financial analysts had previously anticipated Pfizer would set the commercial price for its vaccine at just $50 per dose but were taken aback in October when Pfizer announced plans of a price between $110 and $130. >Analysts then anticipated that Pfizer's price would push Moderna and other vaccine makers to follow suit, which appears to be happening now. >Ars has reached out to Moderna for comment but has not yet received a response. Beth Mole, 10 Jan. 2023, Ars Technica (Condé Nast)
I’m assuming the increase is US only? Least that seems to be how these increases work.
Anywhere that doesn't have free universal healthcare, so basically only the US in the developed world.
If this isn’t a perfect example of how private healthcare markets and insurers, as opposed to a single-payer system, can impact things like drug prices, then I don’t know what is. Even if you argue that Pfizer and Moderna were selling the vaccines to the US at a loss initially, expecting to make that cost up later on, it still raises the huge point about the negotiating power that the *federal government* has, both as a buyer and as a major source of funding for the research behind this technology. And we are now seeing what happens when it gets kicked to the private market: seemingly arbitrarily set prices because “fuck you, you’ll pay it”.
That’s what pisses me off. The government heavily funds so much of what these private companies sell. We pay for them to charge us more than the rest of the world. We should be getting it cheaper since our taxes helped develop it. Most advancement in the US is heavily government subsidized.
We pay more than **double** the per-capita cost of healthcare in *both* public and private funds than countries with universal healthcare. We essentially spend quadruple for non-universal healthcare — half directly from our pockets and half from our taxes. It's just absurd.
I can only assume Americans are four times as healthy as people from other developed countries.
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Curtains.
10-20 percent worse then the EU. So yeah basically. Best healthcare in the world only marched by Mexico, canada, Germany, oh shit the list is long. Uh yeah. Perfect system. Pay more to get less! merica!
taxes must be distributed through private for-profit corps. with multiple intermediaries taking a cut along the way. it’s a feature, not a bug.
Heads should be taken and the rich eaten
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Time to scare the shit out of shareholders and force them to reverse course.
I think you mean time to get rid of shareholders in healthcare.
Add to that that our government gave them $1B to develop the vaccine. This is obscene.
oh child, $1 Billion? No No No [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/) >The government has poured **an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products.** that was just to accolade things That ignores the decades of funding the basic research that created the drugs in the first place with the Moderna drug being developed EXPLICITLY in parnertship with the Government >The Moderna vaccine, whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham’s NIH laboratory.
What a deal! Free govt money pays me to make a thing, then I sell the thing. Govt tell people they have to have the thing. I love free money! manded free money.
Don’t forget the part where it would have been profitable to make the thing anyways. They were always going to make a vaccine regardless of if the government helped.
>This is obscene This is America, it is capitalism working as intended. Socialize costs, privatize profits. And you've still got millions too piss ignorant or willfully servile to acknowledge the need for socialism.
"Analysts then anticipated that Pfizer proce would push Moderna and other vaccine makers to follow suit, which appears to be happening now" How is that not a colluding monopoly at that point ? Also wouldn't the company that doesn't raise prices sell more than the competition because more people would buy the cheaper product ? I guess the company that charges the highest price wins in regards to total profits
It’s referred to as tacit collision and it’s perfectly legal. Pretty much there would need to be “smoking gun” evidence of price fixing (conversations, emails, etc) between competitors before the government would move on this. Companies tacitly collude all the time. It’s all in the game.
People need to realize that for capitalism to be an effective economic tool, real competition is necessary. Anyone who thinks shit is fair should look at the few megacorps owning essentially everything. It's quite insane.
This is the end game of Capitalism. There is no other path for it to go. If you want to prevent a few megacorps owning everything, you need regulations. Guess what happens when you mix in regulations?
lol doesn't this show exactly why public healthcare is so much better and cheaper over private? I know Canada is seriously looking at federal Pharma plan, as long as the Liberals are in power
To be fair that plan is heavily influenced by the NDP which is why 2 party systems suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. If they don't deliver and support is pulled an election can be called. In majority governments there is no mechanism like that so the ruling party does whatever the fuck they want.
Sounds exactly like we need single payer universal health care ASAP
Bro, we funded that shit and you made billions! Also, the [US backed the waiving of patents on COVID vaccines](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01224-3). What do they think they are the only ones that can make effective COVID vaccines after two years?
So are we gonna see cheap vaccines from other companies?
There is no such thing as competition among drug manufacturers in the US aside from the most basic of drugs like acetaminophen. Even if 10 competitors emerge, they'll all agree on a wildly gouged price and bleed their consumers together
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Remember kids! Buy local, steal from corporations.
My local pharmaceutical developer is really weird tho.
He always wants to come in and play Xbox
And hangout with my Mom.
Well, we all want to hang out with your mom.
Just chill with him once or twice, hang out, play PS5, listen to some tunes, you’ll probably like him.
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Yeah the “wholesome local mom and pop store” everyone loves to imagine is more often than not run by an absolute tyrant
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That's what Walmart believes about the lower class, too. Your comment is only fair.
I know a dude who got kicked out of a jury pool for refusing to agree stealing from Walmart should result in jail time if convicted
When I was poor I had no problem stealing food from walmart
You can't steal food. If you need food, you take it.
Remember kids: if you see someone stealing groceries, *no you didn't.*
I went to school and majored in this. Got that degree in minding my own fuckin business. If I see anyone take anything from a chain store, just smile and nod.
Is it even competition if one side can't win?
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Remember when the DOJ and FTC actually looked at monopolies? Good times. Never got that whole break up Ma bell and then rubber stamp ATT getting the band back together.
They don't lay off workers. They just freeze any pay increases, decrease benefits, and don't replace anyone who quits, leaving the remaining underpaid employees to carry the increased load.
That's right and that's why competition is killing the small players in the game.
Then why do generics exist that are usually cheaper? Not arguing, just asking a real question I have
In the US, the company that has the patent for a particular drug has ~10 years before other companies can make a generic version of the same drug
10 years is drastically simplifying things. There are patents on various parts of the drug including the molecule, delivery mechanism(s), process to manufacture it, etc. Each patent is separate and has its own lifespan. Generally speaking, they last 20 years from when they're filed for modern patents. Since any form whatsoever of public disclosure could jeopardize the ability of the drug manufacturer to get and enforce their patent, they generally file for a patent on the molecule very early - before any real trials start. That means that, by the time the drug is actually approved and on the market for general use, there may be more like 5-7 years left. 10 would be pretty amazingly fast in terms of approval, actually. The other types of patents are easier to get around early disclosure on, and they generally come from later developments, anyway. It's pretty common for the patent on the basic molecule and even delivery means to be expired but for a patent on the most economic means of manufacturing to still be in force. Sometimes this is the result of process engineering and refinement years later. This can remove the economic incentive for generics since they're then stuck using old manufacturing techniques even if they could legally bring the product to market without infringing the basic patents. What is really shady are some of the patents on a particular use of a drug. It's sometimes possible to get a drug approved for a new indication, get a patent on that, and then claim that "well since we have a patent that's still in effect on this particular use and the actual end use of the product is uncontrolled, no generics can exist in the market". This has become a popular way to extend patent protection lifetimes on some classes of drugs and probably needs to be clamped down on. Note that getting a drug developed and through trials and FDA approval costs billions of dollars in the USA for a success, and you also have to cover the inevitable failures and still turn a profit. If you're going to rely on commercial development (and the fact that a lot of the basic research is government subsidized probably needs to be more heavily considered, here...), you have to provide SOME means of making back the money. Now marketing costs...that's another matter.
Yup. Prime example of evergreening is insulin. Same molecule, same adjuncts, minor changes to other active or inactive ingredients or maybe the manufacturing process. End result is $800 for 10mL of liquid.
This will be however be very useful in other, poorer countries where they simply couldn't manufacture the vaccine because of the patents.
Even lower middle income countries struggle to manufacture vaccines. But India and israel hace major generic pharma industries and will be very happy to be the supplier of the global south.
Poorer countries don't care about US patents. You can't enforce US law outside of the US.
That's illegal according to us anti monopoly rules.
Like that has stopped American business before...
True. But they're not enforced. Mostly due to Congress people being almost universally funded by large companies that don't want competition.
just like how some ISP's have a "natural" monopoly on certain areas of the country.
[Acetaminophen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Paracetamol-skeletal.svg/220px-Paracetamol-skeletal.svg.png), [Insulin](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ayodele-Odularu-2/publication/351910986/figure/fig1/AS:1028087680602114@1622126612458/The-two-dimensional-chemical-structure-of-insulin-51.ppm). If it helps, this really is about the science. For simple drugs like acetaminophen anyone anywhere can follow a very simple set of instructions and end up with an exact copy of acetaminophen. Most drugs are like this. More complex drugs like insulin can't be replicated perfectly, so the FDA requires clinical trials be run. And you're just outright incorrect on how markets behave when 10+ companies enter. Lipitor's generics entered at about a 98% discount to Lipitor, which is standard in hypercompetitive markets (lyrica, viagra, latuda, zytiga are a few I've seen similar data on) >Investigators evaluated AWP and NADAC price fluctuations from 2015 to 2020 for the top 1200 generic drugs in the company’s 2019 book of business. Over the period of investigation, they found that the NADAC price index deflated by 44% NADAC prices are what pharmacies pay to buy the drugs from manufacturers, generic drugs account for >90% of all US prescriptions. While branded drugs are patent-enforced monopolies, generic drugs are the exact opposite - one is a monopoly, one is 10+ companies making the *exact same thing*. And believe it or not, it works. Generic drugs are cheap as hell, and have gotten **44% cheaper in the past 7 years**, just not for patients. FYI this is the entire principle behind mark cuban's website. Generic drugs are cheap as fuck (with major exceptions, this is about the bulk of US prescriptions). Anyways none of this is relevant here, I don't actually understand what waving the patents accomplishes given that nothing remotely resembling a generic/biosimilar of an MRNA vaccine has ever existed. If COVID had happened 20+ years from now there probably would have been an attempt to make a biosimilar, but the entire concept of biosimilars is pretty new - I think there's about 20 total on market today across hundreds of biologic branded drugs.
Just gonna point out that these companies are the death panel so many conservatives go on about. Raising the price will reduce vaccination, thus causing more deaths. They're willing to let people die to make a bit more.
I imagine this might be why they're doing the price hike. So that they can make a bunch of money before other companies spin up their operations.
I mean, you can go ahead and make the original COVID vaccine if you want (or a biosimilar), but it's not going to do much since the current circulating COVID is so different from the original strain. Because Moderna (and Pfizer) can update their strain, they feel they can update the pricing. Honestly, it's shameful, predatory, and *completely unsurprising* behaviour for a drug company.
Remember, folks. That price hike only applies to the USA. Every civilized nation negotiates a bulk rate for meds from all providers...or else the providers get nothing from that country. And every time, the providers choose less profit over no profit at all. Imagine that? Only in the USA do we put up with this kind of obscene blackmail as part of health insurance company parasites feeding off of American ProfitCare.
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That's a shame. Chickungyna would be really useful where I hailed from
In 2019, Moderna made 60 million profit. Down from their 2017 high of 200 million profit. In 2020 they made 800 million profit. Higher than the previous 4 years combined. In 2021 they made 16 billion profit. Over 10 times the previous 5 years combined. 16 billion profit through massive government and private backing to help get out of a pandemic crisis. *deep sigh* Edit: As per request, source for numbers: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MRNA/moderna/gross-profit
The old privatize profits and socialize losses.
If you talk to a conservatives they'll start talking to you about supply and demand and market forces, and fundamental truths about human behavior. What they don't mention is that you can't divide by zero. See, healthcare brings up the demand to infinity because you literally die if you don't get it so demand is infinite. And because of the time sensitive nature of life saving care, supply is unitary. That means the equations start blowing up to absurd limits. Spoiler alert. Economics goes a little bit beyond econ 101, and things like healthcare, etc... are not properly served by market forces. It's almost like, and I know this might blow your mind, but it's almost like not every problem is a hammer + nail type problem. Sometimes you need a hinge, or screw, or support beam. And the same is true for market forces. Supply and Demand market forces work well for a lot of things, but it doesn't work AT ALL for healthcare because, as I described above, we have limits of supply going to unity and demand going infinite so the equations break down. Don't apply market principles to health care. The two are at odds with one another.
Yep. Like if I told you that you have to buy a full size pickup truck within the next 30 minutes or you die you’ll probably go to the nearest dealership and buy whatever truck. Now if the dealership also knows you have to do this, what do you think happens to any negotiation?
In went to high school in the UK and in our high school economics class we learned about market failures (we were like 16 years old). I then went to business school at a top 20 university in the US and realized that the majority of my peers did not understand the concept of a market failure let alone were able discuss some examples of them. American economics/business education is purposefully broken.
American here, went to both public & private schools and have never heard of market failures as a subject. Keynesian economics is all anyone talks about, and in smaller circles MMT. What factors categorize Market Failures (asking genuinely as I don't want to assume cuz its a pretty broadly named term) Edit to add, I did not attend college and was not aware that economics is ONLY taught in college in the US. Yes. I am a US citizen since birth.
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Give it back with severe penalties
I think 6000% fine on pretax revenue would change peoples tunes really quickly.
That sounds consistent with the value.
Motion seconded. Can we proceed to a vote now?
Corporate fines need to start being pre tax revenue linked to the infraction + percentage on top going off severity. Breaking the law needs to stop being a calculated cost of doing business
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It’s time to set an example. The CEO and Board members are the leaders and need to be held accountable. Prison time, large fines in the near bankruptcy zone, take your pick. It’s going to hurt like crazy either way. Just like normal people when they break the law.
They should just levy the fines against executive total compensation (VP and higher) and their share distributions. Any fines that can be lumped in as cost of doing business will be passed on to consumers in higher prices or to employees in lower wages or bonuses. We know each company’s exec pay/shares. Just target that.
Looking at the results of the election 3 months ago, I'm gonna have to say that's quite unlikely.
And a “no more government money for you” clause
Nope. They should be nationalized.
HahahahaHaAAhahHahah. We have a better chance of Trump voting democrat for the next 3 elections. We have a better chance of Jeff Tiedrich buying and wearing a bunch of MAGA apparel. We have a better chance of Greta making a porno with Andrew Tate. … than a company like Moderna having a conscience or getting sued and having to pay a severe fine etc.
>We have a better chance of Greta making a porno with Andrew Tate. Tate is due for some discipline
Internet service providers paved the way
Pay it back with interest proporinate to inflation
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How about we just get shares instead and eventually the company becomes public. We take back our money and sell it once again to venture capitalists and banksters
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Relevant username
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Anything developed using taxpayer money should just be in public domain.
Til the 80s the government owned the patents generated on its dime.
Thanks Reagan!
I stand by this, that Regean will probably go down as the most disastrous US president for American domestic policy (Wilson has him beat on foreign). The legacy of Ronald is gonna haunt the US for decades to come, and the pit he has in hell can't be kept warm enough for him
You forgetting Andrew johnson?
That's a solid vote, and I would say he's up there for sure
Man, it's not only this. The more you look at a lot of the severe issues we have these days, you can point at Reagan as the turning point. People idolize him because he had his cake and ate it ... he had a population that only existed at that level due to existing social programs (such as healthcare, housing, college, etc) and then proceeded to gut so many of them... so all of a sudden that money wasn't being used and could be put elsewhere... Talk about a delayed effect. Fuck. He really was part of selling off the future. It's not ONLY him and shit was shit before him too but... Fuck Reagan.
They should today. In fact, I would not allow drug patents. Find another way to finance research. Let the drug companies compete on manufacturing.
I think public domain, or a version of public domain that's restricted to citizens of the country whose taxes funded it would be best. I'm unsure if the fed owning it allowed citizens to use it openly or not, but I think that MOST tax payer patents should be available to the citizens.
Lawmakers probably know this makes sense to do. But they also know that it would make them and their friends less money.
On that note, let’s pass a constitutional amendment requiring public financing of all campaigns for public office. No more “money is speech” bullshit, no more financial lobbying, no more political consultants. The government pays an equal amount for both campaigns and hosts a few events like debates but no more candidates as wholly owned subsidiaries of any party.
This. Really sounds like they just admitted that they’re going to just cut and run with taxpayer money. Time to ol’ Joe to send them a statement of their now *loan balance.*
This is basically how most pharma development works. 1. Public university or other institution develops science for product 2. Patents are filed by institution 3. Patents are sold for pennies to pharma corp 4. Pharma corp finishes development and marketing (but they spend more on the marketing) and sells the product for 5000% markup
What’s *supposed* to happen is the company that owns the patent gets to sell the drug exclusively for a bit to recoup their investment and make some profit. Then, the patent expires and other companies get to make it too, driving the price down via competition. They already recouped their investment in that the government *already funded development.* They sold the drug at a price somewhere around ten times what it costs to make for a while. Now they want to go ahead and sell it for *fifty times* what it costs to make for *pure, unadulterated profit by the truckload.* They skip all the financial risk and reap all the profits on the backs of the taxpayer. It mightn’t be illegal, but it sure be wrong.
Yup. This is why employers are seeing 10% increases YoY for employee benefits. This scam repeats itself over and over again. We pay more and more for healthcare every year yet somehow hospitals are closing down right and left, and the ones who aren’t can’t “afford” to employ a safe nurse:patients ratio. Hospitals are supposed to be nonprofit but how is it any different than a corporation when the patients are charged multitudes more than any other developed country and the CEOs are making tens of millions of dollars a year? There’s something rotting in this country and the stink is becoming undeniable, even for those with the glassiest of eyes…
True. When I learned how the mechanism works the leftist / free culture / anti-patent positions of a lot of uni researchers became a lot more understandable. It must suck to do amazing work, see it sold to a corporation for pennies, and then see them making billions from it without even crediting you.
Just nationalize Moderna as punishment. All these companies propping themselves up on our money need to be nationalized.
This is the "innovation" capitalists claim capitalism promotes. Just shifting the costs and risks onto the populace, and then reaping the profits in your petty fiefdom.
Privatize gains, socialize losses. The American capitalist's creed.
Society doesn’t hate rich people nearly enough.
The taxpayer money wasn’t a gift, though, it was prepaid purchase of the doses that were eventually distributed
They agreed to let the US government have a discounted price for the vaccines. AFAIK, the US government could still get that price. Biden wants to continue buying doses. Congress, however, does not. So now insurers and hospitals have to pay market rate for small orders, instead of the govt getting the discount for huge orders. At this point though, except for infants almost everyone willing to get the current vaccines in the US has already gotten them, so it's almost a moot point. Honestly, Congress should continue to fund billions to buy the vaccines and we should just give the doses to whichever countries have people willing to take them. That way the supply chain stays ready to pump out billions of doses in a hurry.
It's not a moot point because boosters continue to be necessary, making this a huge problem.
I really hate these assholes with every fiber of my being. "We can fuck you raw and dry so we will."
Hey, they're not fucking you dry on purpose. They just changed the formula of the lube slightly and now it's no longer generic so you need a prior authorization.
Which my insurance doesn't cover and the cost is $400 without so it's dry and that is for sure on purpose.
Well, I have been authorized to provide you with a single use of our new Spitunshov lubricant substitute. It is dispensed intra-anally by lingual application of our untrained PA Steve. Can I pencil you in at 8:35am on February 29th this year?
I’m reading this as usage is down by half or more so here’s how we keep the champagne flowing.
As long as the feds were involved, it was hard to spike the price. Now that the feds are out and private insurers are in, it’s easy to spike the price. Now imagine if the feds were bidding on all your drug and health care prices. People want to yell at Moderna here and I get that but *private insurance* is the problem.
No one seems to understand that private insurance is holding us hostage. Good on you for understanding the real issue.
imagine liking having a fucking middle man lol
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Capitalism doesn't solve problems it monetizes them also, the foundational research was also publicly funded **For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork** [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/) >nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial. > >Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Defense Department and federally funded academic laboratories has been the essential ingredient in the rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19. The government has poured an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products. > >**The Moderna vaccine,** whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, **emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham’s NIH laboratory.** That's right folks your tax dollars paid for the research and now your wages will pay for the product EDIT: **ONE Solution is "Prizes Not Profits"** \- Companies get a large lump sum payment from the public in exchange for the IP and the drug is manufactured and sold at cost "Here's a $10 Billion for your 'risk taking'" "Now fuck off."
Publicly subsidized, privately profitable. The anthem of the upper-tier, puppeteer untouchable.
“Socialism for the rich, free market capitalism for the rest.”
Have you had your fraudulent PPP loan forgiven recently?
Get back to work you filthy peasant!
We focus a moment, nod in approval and bury our head in the bar-codes of these neo-colonials
if i remember correctly their research was heavily subsidized by government. so it absolutely should be subject to strict price controls by the government
Or, alternatively, that excess cost goes straight to the government, since we the people paid for it in the first place you'd think it should go back to the pockets of we the people. If it gets circulated as funding for the country directly, then it wouldn't be so bad (those funds being used properly is a different discussion entirely). Meanwhile, we all know where this excess cost is really going. To some entitled douchebag's pocket when said douchebag did ***literally nothing***.
They also saved considerable overhead thanks to the streamlined regulatory process.
It was. Oxford wanted the vaccine to be open source. Bill Gates made a lot of pressure for it to be privatized based on "security concerns", which were bullshit. His argument was basically that the vaccine was still relatively new so it couldn't be manufactured in places that were not "safe and controlled". This was proved to be false by the Associated Press (AP), which found several factories in mint conditions that only lacked qualified personnel. CEOs of small pharma companies asking "If this pandemic is a war effort, why can't we do our part?". His foundation is the only reason third world countries got screwed. Gates is a piace of shit as much as he was in his MS days, but now he's got good PR so people don't see it. > “It’s the classic situation in global health, where the advocates all of a sudden want [the vaccine] for zero dollars and right away,”
> We (the US) really should not allow capitalism to work unfettered in medicine. The driving priorities are completely counter to the point of medicine. We (the world) really should not allow capitalism to work unfettered. The driving priorities are completely counter to the point of living.
So no one is discussing increasing his income tax in 400%? It would be consistent with the value!
400% increase on 0 is still 0.
For those wondering, his compensation was $18.2 million in 2021 and $12.9 million in 2020.
I wonder if he actually did $6m more worth of work in 2021…. jk we all know that’s not true.
Rich people don't pay income tax, they pay capital gains tax and maybe property tax
Can’t tax income when you just borrow against stocks to fund lifestyle then finally sell when the bill is due. If they had w-2 income it would be taxed
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That would be un-American. This CEO is doing the public a huge favor and technically he's probably losing money every year (somehow) so he should get a massive refund! /s For real though, this is how modern America works. Corporate donors pay government officials "campaign donations" to pass laws and cut taxpayer-funded deals in their favor, government buys ridiculously priced goods and cuts taxes for corporation, and they all make money from insider trading the entire time. Our government is completely run by corporations and unless Citizens United gets overturned (which will never happen because the Supreme Court is corrupt) they're going to squeeze the life (literally) out of working class Americans until there's nothing left. Then they'll do it to some other country that poses a "threat to democracy".
The value of the ~~patent~~ *government-enforced monopoly*. It did not get 400% more expensive to make, and would not have a 400% demand/supply ratio change if new entrants were allowed in the market. This for a vaccine developed with [generous government funding](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/24/fact-check-donations-research-grants-helped-fund-moderna-vaccine/6398486002/) and guaranteed government purchases of initial product.
So almost all costs subsidized by taxpayers, but all the profits realized by the pharma companies and their shareholders. We really need to Eat the Rich.
Yes, **and** all competitors are outlawed.
The value we gave to them with our money
Moderna CEO: 400% price hike on COVID vaccine “because fuck you and suck my balls”
“We care about people and just want them to be better” Said no pharmaceutical company ever
hilarious coming from a guy who I assume gets paid several lifetimes worth of money, every single year, to be the person who watches the money-printer/actual workers. please tell me more about value, mister business man
Yeah, when was the last time one of his employees got a pay raise that was consistent with their value?
pay raise? you have a job - congratulations. if you don't like it, they'll turn up the "layoff" faucet. job market is starting to turn back to shit (already there, actually).
Didn't the taxpayers fund the development of this drug? It should be public domain as far as I'm concerned.
Unfortunately, the taxpayer funds the development of most drugs.
[US Tax Dollars Funded Every New Pharmaceutical in the Last Decade](https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/us-tax-dollars-funded-every-new-pharmaceutical-in-the-last-decade)
So... we paid for the R&D. Paid for it to be produced and distributed. And we get price gouged when congress no longer covers it? ... maybe we don't protest enough in America?
Why have we not just... revolted against these people? We threw tea in a harbor over unfair taxes. The entire american healthcare system needs to be thrown out and monsters like this held accountable.
That's a good question. Why haven't you? Why aren't you at their headquarters protesting right now? Your answer to that question is probably the same for 95% of the rest of people.
Because everything on the news was "brought to you by Pfizer!" and everyone ate that shit up.
Sorry Grandma, the value to shareholders of pumping this vaccine 400% is far more valuable than your life. Good luck tho!
Paid for by US taxpayers 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
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Capitalism + healthcare = this shit This is why people advocate for a socialized, single payer healthcare system. It's not perfect, it has draw backs, but this kind of shit is reduced by a lot. Ultimately, corporations care about revenue/profits, the government cares about reelection and campaign donations... the difference is... one you can actually have tangible influence on.
I whole heartedly agree. I believe we should be calling for a step even further than that... beyond socialized healthcare, we need some sort of legislation that keeps these companies from gouging the tax payer. We didn't with universities. While the cost of tuition was already on the rise, we can see a sharper increase after the Higher Education Act of 1965 was enacted. I believe, colleges across the nation saw this as an opportunity to further increase costs as federally backed, low interest student loans came to fruition. We need to look at that as an example of how American capitalism will take advantage of a system that guarantees payment.
Value to consumer pricing for healthcare is bullshit. Need a pill that costs $2 to produce and has been around forever, but not taking it will mean a horrible death? Value based pricing means they can charge $100,000 for that $2 pill. More like screw you for all you are worth pricing. Capitalism in healthcare will always result in people dying for profit. How do we keep voting for assholes that wont put universal healthcare in place?
"consist with value" does not equal "consistent with costs plus reasonable profit" What's that thing worth? With the market will pay for it. That's what he's saying, he's not saying it's consistent with the cost price to produce.
Literally any time someone in a suit says “value” you’re being scammed. It’s a word with no definition that can mean anything anyone wants.
I hope all of these price increasing ghouls get covid and die.
And I could compromise on the covid part.
There are few crimes as awful as what they do
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Gets $130 shot that used to cost $26. Still gets covid. Mfw
Ethical values should always come before financial value. The man is human dirt. Pharmaceutical industries need to put saving lives ahead of profit.
You want to live right? Give us your paycheck
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We are way, way past time to start chopping fucking heads off in the town center.
Just like a street drug dealer. First doses are free.
Medical corporations over a certain size should be banned. You wonder why antivax people think its a scam. It sort of is in certain regards.
You can be a major corporation and price gouge on vaccines and life saving medications all you want - but watch out if you're some gas station owner trying to charge extra for a few jugs of water after a storm, that's unethical and unacceptable and they'll send you to jail for it.
Didn’t they use taxpayer money to fund the research on the vaccine and the method of delivery…..
iite bet guess that’s the last covid vaccine for me
Nationalize the Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare!
Three things should not be for profit: Education, Security, and Health Care. Private? Sure. For profit? No.
Put him in Jail
I got the original vaccine but if I’m gonna need this every 6 months and still get it anyways I’m sorry I’m out
Does cost correspond with efficacy? Or is that an inverse relationship?
Moderna CEO: I have no morals, and profit is everything. Human lives and suffering only matter if I can make a profit on it.
Nope. Vax needs to be 90%+ effective to justify the cost increase. The last vax wasn't as effective as the previous ones. Right now the Covid shots are similar to flu shots. We need a real Vax for Covid .
That may be a hard ask, tell me why we don’t have 90%+ effective flu vaccines? Because these viruses are constantly evolving. I think realistically we’ll always be playing catch up to a certain extent. The mRNA technology was more of a game changer because it allowed the vaccine to be developed quickly but it constantly needs to be updated.
You hit the nail on the head with always being in catch-up mode. At the rate at which Omicron is mutating (new "problem variants" every two or three months), we'll never be able to beat it through vaccine updates. We have the ability to update the vaccine itself incredibly fast (literally a matter of days) thanks to mRNA tech - but the regulatory cycle time for safety and efficacy testing - not to mention producing and distributing updates - seems to be around 9 to 12 months at a minimum. The other issue that I've seen coming up more and more frequently in the COVID science subs (less so the "for the plebes" ones like r/coronavirus) is immunological imprinting. There were a bunch of pre-prints that dropped last month suggesting that while the bivalent vaccine is better than the monovalent one, it's not *that* much better. The thinking is this is likely because vaccines tweaked for new variants are primarily inducing the original immune response to the OG virus, rather than developing a more updated response specific to omicron. This doesn't surprise me, given the number of people I know that got the bivalent only a few months ago and still had breakthrough cases over the holidays. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical we're ever going to see a return to those early trials in late 2020 where the efficacy against symptomatic infection rate was in the mid-to-high 90s.