Recent cases of pharmaceutical companies jacking up the price of lifesaving vaccines confirms once again that we need a new approach to pharmaceutical innovation. Health-sector governance and public funding should be promoting collaboration and solidarity, not zero-sum competition and gatekeeping.
LONDON – As political theater, it would be hard to beat US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders’ recent grilling of Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, who was forced to explain why his company has quadrupled the price of its COVID-19 vaccine. But while Sanders is right that Moderna owes its vaccines to billions of dollars of US taxpayer support, its decision to raise the price should come as no surprise. As I warned in March 2020, drug companies will always make a killing from crises like the pandemic, and US taxpayers will always be gouged, until we fix an obviously broken system.
LONDON – As political theater, it would be hard to beat US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders’ recent grilling of Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, who was forced to explain why his company has quadrupled the price of its COVID-19 vaccine. But while Sanders is right that Moderna owes its vaccines to billions of dollars of US taxpayer support, its decision to raise the price should come as no surprise. As I warned in March 2020, drug companies will always make a killing from crises like the pandemic, and US taxpayers will always be gouged, until we fix an obviously broken system.