Pfizer Expects Their BioNTech COVID Shot Will Cost $110
The U.S. government paid $19.50 a dose for the Pfizer vaccine under its first contract, and $30.50 under its most recent one.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
MONEY SHOT
Pfizer is making preparations to sell its COVID vaccine commercially as early as next year, and predicts the price per dose will be around $110 to $130. Angela Lukin, Pfizer's U.S. president, said Thursday that a commercial rollout depends on when its existing U.S. supply runs out and when its federal government contracts expire. The U.S. government is set to end offering free vaccines soon after Congress cut billions of dollars in COVID funding in September. Lukin said it's unlikely people will pay out of their own pocket as health insurers and employers will likely cover the cost, similar to flu shots. However, the proposed price is far greater than previous doses. The U.S. government paid $19.50 a dose for the Pfizer vaccine under its first contract, and $30.50 under its most recent one.Julia Kosgei, policy adviser to the People's Vaccine Alliance, a group that advocates for free access to COVID vaccines, called the price hike "obscene" and said experts estimate it costs Pfizer $1.18 to make each dose. "While health workers and the vulnerable continue to go unvaccinated in developing countries, Pfizer is shamelessly fleecing the public for ever-greater sums of money," she said.Prices for vaccines in the U.S. vary from about $12 to $268.
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Perhaps if they insist on fleecing the world for this technology, the USA should open-source it.
Excellent point.
Shining example of the worst aspects of capitalism. Be certain that if someone comes up with a treatment that can eradicate a Covid infection serious enough to end your life within the next ten minutes, they will charge a hundred grand for it even if it cost them five bucks to produce. In America it’s not about saving lives, it’s about leverage based profiteering. Happens all the time in the pharmaceutical industry.
Obscene price hike but I also doubt the true “developed” cost is only $1.18 per unit. Perhaps over time it might be but not until all developmental/overhead costs are covered.
There's this old story about the invention of the game of chess.
As the story goes an ancient mathematician invented chess and presented the game to the King (of India or Persia, I suppose). The king was so pleased with the game that he said, "This is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me! However shall I repay you?" The ancient mathematician thought for a moment and said, "I don't want much, your majesty. Just place a single kernel of grain on the first square of the board and two grains on the second, four grains on the third, 16 on the fourth and so on until you have done so for all 64 squares on the board." The king said., "So it shall be done."
At this point, I am sure everyone of you has rolling eyes because in this digital age everyone instantly recognizes that 2 to the 64th power kernels of grain would amount to more grain than there is in the entire world.
Maybe this story is most likely apocryphal. But it does make one wonder what would have happened if it wasn't?
The inventor of chess would have most likely been quietly put to death and never mentioned again. One cannot imagine a world in which an ancient empire changed hands due to a simple swindle like this.
The story is not only a parable about how math can quickly have us contemplating numbers that are too large for us to ever actually imagine but also a lesson in what happens when you simply get too greedy for your own good.
This insanity has to stop. I have a hard time believing it’s necessary to charge this much for the vaccine considering that We The People coughed up something like $2 billion to pay for the R&D.