NeighbourhoodVille
A few weeks ago, we noted that Moderna was getting ready to jack the price of their public dollar-built mRNA-based COVID vaccines into the stratosphere:
...Moderna’s announcement early this month that it would consider a price hike on the vaccine was inevitable. Pfizer and BioNTech had made a similar announcement last October. But Moderna’s proposed quadrupling of the price—from the current $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—is a stunning 4,000 percent increase from its manufacturing cost of $2.85 per dose...
Well...
It turns out that Bernie Sanders who, thanks to the Democratic gains in the US Senate last November, now has the power to compel the fine folks that run Moderna to explain themselves:
...Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions .... called on Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel to testify before Congress on a proposed price increase for the vaccine...
And what then happened, before the Moderna chief even testified?
The following:
The following:
Moderna Inc. will keep its COVID-19 vaccines available and free of charge for all people in the U.S. after the public-health emergency ends, the company said late Wednesday...
Imagine that.
A pol righteously and unequivocally calls a public money gobbling corporation on its BS and the latter immediately backs down.
Would'a thunk it.
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Of course, this most recent announcement by Moderna only covers the American market...As for the rest of us?...We'll have to wait and see, particularly if our pols decide to instead acquiesce to the flack hackery of lobbyists and sit on their hands...
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2 comments:
Can't blame the executives for changing their minds. Their move was stupid, but they aren't crazy. Who would want to be interrogated by Bernie Saunders for what Moderna wanted to do. Yikes. Good for Saunders.
I suspect Moderna thought they could get away with their move to increase the purchase price. It not like any government has been all that adverse to companies raising the prices of medication or having a medical system which is so expensive that the U.S.A. has a much higher rate of mortality for women giving birth and their babies than even 2nd and 3rd world countries. Moderna most likely thought it was business as usual except Bernie Saunders isn't your typical politician.
Thanks for the article. Made me laugh.
e.a.f.--
In addition to the comic aspect it also demonstrates that pushback works.
And, of course, that elections still matter.
(more on Uncle Bernie to come...)
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