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Just last week, the drug giant Moderna was scrambling to explain away concerns about its plans to quadruple the price for its Covid-19 vaccine, from $26 per dose to $110–130 per dose. “I would think,” claimed Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel, “this type of pricing is consistent with the value.”
It costs Moderna as little as $2.85 to produce a dose of the vaccine. So we’re talking about a price that would be roughly $127 above the production cost for each shot that goes into someone’s arm. Even by the standard measures of pharmaceutical-company excess, this is, as Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) suggest, an example of “unseemly profiteering.”
Does Moderna need the money? No. Over the past two years, the company has made more than $18 billion in profits from its vaccine. The company is literally awash in money—so much so that its CEO is now worth more than $6 billion, up from $4.3 billion in 2021. “This is what corporate greed looks like,” says former secretary of labor Robert Reich.
But shouldn’t Moderna be able to profit from a vaccine it created? Actually, as the office of Senator Bernie Sanders notes, the Moderna vaccine was “developed in partnership with scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a U.S. government agency that is funded by U.S. taxpayers. The federal government directly provided $1.7 billion to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine research and development, and guaranteed the company billions more in sales.”
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
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Comments
Why to stop at $130, life is much more precious.
Look at how Biogen's greed over its first FDA approved Alzheimer drug destroyed it. Medicare/Medicaid reluctance to play ball was a huge factor.
Govt in future will also have the power to negotiate with Big Pharma. Right now, it is a passive player. Drug industry is also gaming the FDA approvals - get FDA approval & charge arm-and-leg, but Biogen overdid that & failed.
Sci-fi movies predicted this kind of biopharma practice years ago...it's all about the $$$. (and health, if you can afford it.)
Moderna’s stock actually rallied earlier after the Pfizer announcement in anticipation they would make the same move. There are so few dominant players here at a certain point it seems like collusion or cartel like behavior.
There must be clauses within the government grant to contain the eventual product cost or the government can claw back the fund, whether that is successful or not.
As this link below shows, Moderna and NIH cooperated under informal arrangements during the Covid crisis. But it wasn't like a regular Government grant/contract that do have a clause that the Government has the right of first refusal for any commercialized technology. To encourage Covid vaccine or drug developments, the Government guaranteed advance orders to 8 companies for any products they may successfully develop (5 were for vaccines, 3 were for other types of drugs). It turned out that startup Moderna (without any prior commercial products) was more cooperative with the NIH/Government than Pfizer. Recall that, later, Pfizer didn't even want to give the Government priority in any subsequent/follow-up orders (beyond its initial guaranteed advance orders) until the Government threatened to use its powers under import/export regulations.
As they say, this stuff/mess is complicated.
https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/03/31/nihs-fight-ownership-modernas-covid-19-patent-highlights-hazards-business-collaborations/id=148040/
The other interesting factor here is evidence of how commercialization in the case of pharmaceuticals doesn't reduce prices as Adam Smith would like it, but increases them as there are so few players--from $27 per dose to a soon over $100 a dose. Meanwhile, even the debt ceiling and the new Congress's unwillingness to subsidize vaccines for citizens may be playing a role in Moderna's announcement as now the "free market" amongst only three manufacturers will determine the price. KFF illustrates the situation in the above link:
Here we have a very marginal drug that slows brain decline ( does not stop it or reverse it) very very modestly, kills 2 to 3% of selected patients in carefully monitored trial, was only tested on patients with early Alzheimer's in controlled situations, requires several MRIs during treatment and will cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Unless Medicare can limit it to clinical trial settings, there will be infusion clinics set up on every street corner by for profit clinics recruiting any elder with any degree of Alzheimer's to get this "miracle".
Last year before they restricted the use of the other Biogen drug, Medicare increased the part B premiums of very single member in the US at least $7 just to cover an even more marginal drug.
Dozens of Scientists and MDs wrote a letter supporting this one's approval. Guess how many of them had contracts, consulting arrangements or speaking fees with Biogen? 50%
https://hbr.org/2022/09/moderna-v-pfizer-what-the-patent-infringement-suit-means-for-biotech
It is unclear who was first to file the critical claims on these patents since BioNTech has been working on mRNA even longer than Moderna. How much is the overlaps there is between Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech's patents?
The NIH complaint case is very interesting since they collaborated with Moderna in the development of their vaccines and leading to a marketable product. Thus NIH has earned the coinventorship rights. If Moderna tries to file a separate patent excluding NIH the new patent can be invalidated if the patent is challenged in the court.
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"Although infections and deaths are trending down, the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 continues to grow outside of the Northeast, where it’s already dominating at 87% of new cases (CDC). In the West and Midwest, it’s at 24% (up 50% and 71%, respectively, in a week) and at 39% in the Southeast (up 26%). At 49% nationally, XBB.1.5 will eventually replace BQ.1.1, which has slid to 27%.
So far, the bivalent mRNA boosters remain effective in lowering the risks for serious disease and death. Besides the not-vaccinated having a 19-fold higher chance of dying from an infection than people with up-to-date boosters, the latter group is 3 times less likely to get hospitalized than those with only a primary series (CDC).
However, bivalent use remains low. Despite the safety of the booster for kids 5 to 11 (Update January 16), only 11.5% of recipients of a primary series have gone back for the bivalent (CDC).
Kids under 5 not yet eligible for a bivalent booster (Pfizer’s 3-jab primary series for this age group uses the bivalent as the 3rd dose) are not even getting their primary vaccination. Only 5% of kids 2 to 4 have a primary and 3% of those under 2 (CDC). For the kids under 2, this translates to the highest rate of recent emergency department visits for COVID, 5.0%, which tops the 3.8% for adults over 64. "
How can you not vaccinate your kids? This makes refusing measles vaccine look like a good idea, I guess you can believe that since everyone else is vaccinated, there is no measles for you kid to catch, but clearly there is a lot of Covid still.
She publishes a newsletter once a week or so. I've been following her information for over a year, and she' really a great medical communicator. You can subscribe to her free email newsletter at the link above.
She had symptoms for several weeks and is still down a t bit. The other cousin's wife got it at work and it took over two months for her worse headaches and fatigue to start to resolve. My son got it in August and it took 3 months before he felt well.
This variant is obviously much more contagious and may be taking longer to resolve and even ? making more long Covid
Interestingly the feds are shipping Paxlobid to all US doctor's offices free of charge
I don't think the current recommendations are for more than five days and only in over 65 and high risk people, and while you might get your PCP who knows you to give you more, most people go to Urgent Care or a pharmacy where they do not have a known provider who trusts them
Longer courses are reserved for people who rebound with significant symptoms.
As far as the virus hanging around, no one knows. It likely can as other RNA viruses do like HIV. The nearest similar disease to long Covid is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which in many cases is due to a DNA virus mononucleosis. Some of these patients do improve with long term (months) of anti-viral therapy