The government assumed the financial risk of development, which allowed us to get the vaccines so quickly. But the public is paying a huge chunk for research, development and manufacturing. Congress appropriated nearly 10 billion tax dollars to support development and manufacturing of COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.
Both Pfizer and Moderna used the National Institutes of Health patented messenger RNA technology to create their vaccines. The U.S. committed to buying hundreds of millions of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in advance with a price tag of $1.9 billion. Pfizer is being paid handsomely to produce the vaccine.
The U.S. invested $20 billion in pharmaceutical companies to quickly move forward on clinical trials, development and production capabilities. Moderna had never before produced an approved drug, so the government paid for its production capability and virtually “de-risked” the enterprise for making the vaccines by committing to buy them when brought to market.
Millions around the globe have survived the pandemic as a result of the vaccines. Also it saved the world trillions of dollars in economic loss. Just a thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment