'The Sheer Greed Is Obscene': Moderna Plans 4,000% Markup for Covid Vaccine

[douglas9]

The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical giant Moderna faced angry backlash on Tuesday following the CEO's announcement that the firm is considering pricing its Covid-19 vaccine somewhere between $100 and $130 per dose in the United States.

The upper end of that range, according to the People's Vaccine Alliance (PVA), would represent a 4,000% markup above the cost of manufacturing the shot, which experts have pegged at roughly $2.85 per dose.

"The sheer greed is obscene," said PVA policy co-lead Julia Kosgei, who stressed that "billions of taxpayer dollars went into the development of mRNA vaccines."

"This vaccine isn't just Moderna's, it was developed in collaboration with a government agency based on decades of publicly-funded research," Kosgei said. "It is the people's vaccine—and it should be available and affordable for everyone, everywhere."

Stephane Bancel, Moderna's billionaire CEO, defended the proposed price range in an interview on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, tellingThe Wall Street Journal that he believes "this type of pricing is consistent with the value" of the vaccine, which was developed with the crucial help of government scientists.

In 2020, Moderna admitted that 100% of the funding for its vaccine development program came from the federal government—which, despite its leverage, has refused to force the company to share its vaccine recipe with the world.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/moderna-vaccine-price-markup

[Goodheart]

1. Often what's cited as "manufacturing cost" by critics doesn't include any portion of R&D

Actually, I was a cost accountant by trade, and R&D is NEVER included in financial statements as a manufacturing cost. It's been a few years, but as I recall GAAP by the FASB requires that research and development costs in any enterprise have to be recognized as expense in the period spent, and not later allocated to any product that might come out of that research.

So, what I'm saying is that often these stories of obscene greed are oversimplified and don't acknowledge the true costs of develping a product.

[we can do it]

2. Ummmm. Was paid for by taxpayers.

From OP- In 2020, Moderna admitted that 100% of the funding for its vaccine development program came from the federal government—which, despite its leverage, has refused to force the company to share its vaccine recipe with the world.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

26. I'd like to know more about the specifics of this than a line from Common Dreams.

How did the funding and program work?

[PatSeg]

37. From Axios

Moderna has not been living up to contractual obligations to disclose the percentage of taxpayer dollars that are funding its coronavirus vaccine project, but the pharmaceutical company tells Axios that federal money makes up "100% funding of the program."

Moderna has received almost $1 billion in taxpayer grants to get its vaccine through clinical trials and is considering setting the highest price of all coronavirus vaccine candidates.

Moderna's contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is part of Health and Human Services, includes a provision that requires Moderna to "clearly state ... the percentage of the total costs of the program" financed with federal vs. private dollars.

Moderna has not done this in any of its press releases tied to its coronavirus vaccine. Two consumer advocacy groups, Public Citizen and Knowledge Ecology International, are now pushing HHS to "enforce the provision in this contract and all other applicable contracts."

There is more at the link:

https://www.axios.com/2020/08/05/moderna-barda-coronavirus-funding-disclosure

[BlueCheeseAgain]

41. Thank you!

[womanofthehills]

42. Moderna and U.S. at Odds Over Vaccine Patent Rights

Looks like Moderna & NIH scientists both contributed.

From NYT November 2021

WASHINGTON — Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a bitter dispute over who deserves credit for inventing the central component of the company’s powerful coronavirus vaccine, a conflict that has broad implications for the vaccine’s long-term distribution and billions of dollars in future profits.

The vaccine grew out of a four-year collaboration between Moderna and the N.I.H., the government’s biomedical research agency — a partnership that was widely hailed when the shot was found to be highly effective. A year ago this month, the government called it the “N.I.H.-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.” https:/

The agency says three scientists at its Vaccine Research Center — Dr. John R. Mascola, the center’s director; Dr. Barney S. Graham, who recently retired; and Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett, who is now at Harvard — worked with Moderna scientists to design the genetic sequence that prompts the vaccine to produce an immune response, and should be named on the “principal patent application.”

Moderna disagrees. In a July filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the company said it had “reached the good-faith determination that these individuals did not co-invent” the component in question. Its application for the patent, which has not yet been issued, names several of its own employees as the sole inventors. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/us/moderna-vaccine-patent.html

[ancianita]

40. Which probably no longer pays for it, and so the markup, probably to help keep its foreign markets.

There's also legal wrangling over vaccine patents.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. and CureVac NV are staking claim in court to a long history of scientific breakthroughs that led to the messenger RNA vaccine used for Covid-19.

These and other rival drug patent owners are asking federal courts for a cut of the profits Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. collected from their revolutionary shots. How these battles play out will set the tone for other patent holders feeling left out of the Covid innovation race and future health crises.

At least seven lawsuits have been launched against makers of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, Bloomberg Law data show....

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/covid-vaccine-windfall-profits-under-attack-by-patent-holders

[we can do it]

43. Research and Development of vaccine done before making it available.

[ancianita]

47. The R&D done was done at university labs first.

[we can do it]

48. Paid for by taxpayers Moderna admits.

[ancianita]

50. Paid for by public funding before Moderna, in the Berkeley Labs in CA.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. And corporations never account for how much we spend to carry them.

[Autumn]

5. They didn't pay for R&D. We did that.

[ancianita]

44. Actually, Berkeley and Harvard paid the R&D, at least for developing the mRNA chemistry part.

[Autumn]

46. The money came from the government. nt

[ancianita]

49. Not from the beginning. mRNA research went on in labs for 30 years before DARPA funded it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine#Early_research

The problem with developing an mRNA vaccine was that RNA hadn't been atomically mapped, and so couldn't even be "seen" until Jennifer Douda mapped it and won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna

[Autumn]

52. The money for the covid vaccine came from the government.

[Celerity]

64. The pro Big Pharma replies on this thread are symbolic of why the US will likely not remove

the rapacious profit motive from most all aspects of its healthcare system anytime soon. You see the same thing with many discussions of the expansive scam known as Medicare Advantage.

Reflexive, pro-corporate defences of the systemic extraction and transfer of wealth from the broad base up to the top of the pyramid, all involving what most all other adavanced nations on the planet consider a fundamental human right.

[Autumn]

66. We seem to have some Big Pharma reps running around

[obamanut2012]

6. Nope -- "Moderna admitted that 100% of the funding for its vaccine development program came from the

federal government."

[AllyCat]

54. Right. This here.

[Magoo48]

17. Obscene is putting it mildly. Vulture Capitalism is devouring America.

Our common welfare means nothing to anyone but the “common” people.

[appalachiablue]

20. +1

[dalton99a]

3. "100% of the funding for its vaccine development program came from the federal government"

'Nuf said

[BlueCheeseAgain]

25. What does that mean?

I'd like to hear more about that. Were they the only company that received funding? Did a lot of companies receive funding to develop a vaccine, and only Pfizer and Moderna were successful? If so, what reward should they get?

[womanofthehills]

34. The NIH claims joint ownership of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine

What they're saying: NIH said in a statement that its scientists created the "stabilized coronavirus spike proteins for the development of vaccines against coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2," and the government consequently has "sought patents to preserve the government's rights to these inventions."
https://www.axios.com/2020/06/25/moderna-nih-coronavirus-vaccine-ownership-agreements

[BumRushDaShow]

45. "What does that mean?"

It means tax-payer funded through NIH grants - https://covid19.nih.gov/funding#

The annual appropriations for HHS usually includes billions for this type of research.

Biden Signs FY 23 Omnibus With Increases for Research, Health Workforce
January 4, 2023

Contacts
Christa Wagner, Manager, Government Relations
[e-mail]
Katherine Cruz, Legislative Analyst
[e-mail]
For Media Inquiries
[e-mail]

On Dec. 29, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (H.R. 2617) into law, which includes $1.7 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2023 discretionary government funding for all 12 annual spending bills, as well as a number of other health care provisions.

(snip)

National Institutes of Health (NIH) 

The omnibus provides a total of $47.5 billion for the NIH in FY 2023, an increase of $2.5 billion (5.6%) above the FY 2022 enacted level. The bill provides increases to the Clinical and Translational Science Awards and the Institutional Development Award programs. The accompanying joint explanatory statement includes requirements regarding the reporting of the use of animals in research, funding for regional biocontainment laboratories and the workforce to support biosafety level 3-plus research, and funding to increase the diversity of the research workforce.

(snip)

https://www.aamc.org/advocacy-policy/washington-highlights/biden-signs-fy-23-omnibus-increases-research-health-workforce

Decades in the Making: mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines

Home / NIH Strategic Response to COVID-19 Decades in the Making: mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines

Two U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 have saved millions of lives. These vaccines were developed with NIH support and research on a protein found on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccines in people were established in what seemed like record time. But in reality, more than 50 years of public and private laboratory research laid the groundwork for the rapid development of these life-saving vaccines.

Studies of viruses, including other coronaviruses, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV); advances in general vaccine technology; and the breakthrough in using fatty, oil-like particles called lipid nanoparticles to deliver vaccines to cells were just some of the efforts that made the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines possible. For decades, NIH has supported the research that led to these vaccines — and this timeline provides some of the best examples.


(snip)

https://covid19.nih.gov/nih-strategic-response-covid-19/decades-making-mrna-covid-19-vaccines

For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork

Much of the pioneering work on mRNA vaccines was done with government money, though drugmakers could walk away with big profits

By Arthur Allen, Kaiser Health News on November 18, 2020


When he started researching a troublesome childhood infection nearly four decades ago, virologist Dr. Barney Graham, then at Vanderbilt University, had no inkling his federally funded work might be key to deliverance from a global pandemic. Yet nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial.

Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Defense Department and federally funded academic laboratories has been the essential ingredient in the rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19. The government has poured an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products. The Moderna vaccine, whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham’s NIH laboratory.

Coronavirus vaccines are likely to be worth billions to the drug industry if they prove safe and effective. As many as 14 billion vaccines would be required to immunize everyone in the world against COVID-19. If, as many scientists anticipate, vaccine-produced immunity wanes, billions more doses could be sold as booster shots in years to come. And the technology and production laboratories seeded with the help of all this federal largesse could give rise to other profitable vaccines and drugs.

The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which are likely to be the first to win FDA approval, in particular rely heavily on two fundamental discoveries that emerged from federally funded research: the viral protein designed by Graham and his colleagues, and the concept of RNA modification, first developed by Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, Moderna’s founders in 2010 named the company after this concept: “Modified” + “RNA” = Moderna, according to co-founder Robert Langer.

(snip)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/

As a general practice, "vaccines" are considered "loss leaders" for pharma companies and the various health agencies have actually had to beg them to make them. COVID-19 turned that on its head

[leftstreet]

7. Must be nice. Free Fed money and no rules! n/t

[Freethinker65]

8. There is also a cost for distribution, storage, administration, quality control, records keeping, ..

As well as promotion when competing vaccines become more readily available.

How much are comparable vaccines against shingles, HPV, etc. marked up?

While I do agree the US taxpayer funded all, or much of, the R & D, not allowing any profit could lead to a decrease, or even a possible cease, in production.

[inthewind21]

9. So

Do these same costs not exist in other countries? The defense of this BS is EXACTLY why we are gouged over and over and over again by pharma in this country.

[jimfields33]

11. Don't know. Only China and India are larger then we are.

I’d imagine it costs more for mass production. More then Iceland that has 376,000 people.

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. Whatever those costs, they weren't losing money at the cuirrent price levels.

If the margin was too tight they could possibly justify doubling the price or whatever, but a 4,000% increase?? For the sake of argument lets assume that they were just breaking even, all things considered, under current pricing. Heck, assume that, out of the goodness of their heart, they lost a buck on every dose. Now suddenly they raise that price by tens of dollars...

The Covid vaccine is not exactly an orphan drug. Literally Billions of doses get sold. A 50 cent profit per dose roughly equates to a billion dollars in profit, a ten dollar profit per dose roughly equates to 20 billion dollars in profit.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

28. The headline is deliberately misleading.

They aren't increasing the price 4000%. The proposed price is 4000% of the manufacturing cost. Right now the federal government is apparently paying $26 per shot.

[Tom Rinaldo]

51. OK then, let's do the math. Even assuming they were just breaking even at the current price...

And they are raising the price from $26 to between $100 and $120 a shot, and if they ultimately sell a billion doses at that price, they will pile up about 75 billion dollars profit off of a product that taxpayers paid most of the research costs on.

[Freethinker65]

13. Good Rx shingles vaccine price $180 to $205. Insurance covers it.

COVID vaccines had been provided "free" to all Americans (Government paid for the entire program which means US taxpayers paid for it).

$100 does not seem unreasonable to me, especially now that fewer Americans will be getting the vaccine and Moderna will still be devoting production time and space to it (along with promotion, storage, distribution, etc.). Alternative vaccines will be available, so as a company they need to watch the market.

This is a far cry from the EpiPen and similar fiascos.

[Torchlight]

14. I'm not reading any assertions to deny profit.

Simply frustration at a 4000% mark up. Between the two absurd extremes, there are a host of options.

[Freethinker65]

15. Would love to know what the US government (us taxpayers) paid per administered/distributed dose.

Bet it was lots more than the stated "production" price in this thread.

[Torchlight]

16. If you find out, please let us know.

I'm rather certain it would be insightful.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

29. The article says $26.

[fescuerescue]

39. It should be provided at cost

If they don't want to do it for that, then there are LOTS AND LOTS of other companies that would jump at it.

[Freethinker65]

59. Lol

[ProfessorGAC]

63. SG&A Can Be Expensive...

...but it rarely exceeds direct manufacturing cost, even in the pharmaceutical industry. Given the amount of resources applied to cGMP it's higher than in most industries but not that much, as a great deal of it is already sunk cost. They may only need to onboard 2 or 3 more people, as the departmental infrastructure already exists.
So, maybe adding those general administrative costs, takes us to $5 operational cost.
Since the R&D did not involve Moderna money, tacking on a recoupment of that investment is bogus.
This is still an unjustified increase.

[Hekate]

10. I agree-- it is obscene

[Walleye]

18. Pricing consistent with value? Does that mean what is it worth to you to stay alive

[SunSeeker]

27. Exactly. And this is the problem with for profit healthcare in a nutshell.

I mean, why not charge $5,000 for $5 penicillin, since it's "value" is quite high when you have a life threatening infection? The only reason they don't is because they don't have a patent lock on penicillin.

[Bayard]

19. U.S. citizens pay for R&D, and development

By including it in the final price of the drug. Other countries don't let them get away with that.

So, if the government paid for the R&D here, there is no excuse for that pricing.

[Ilsa]

21. I hope Dolly Parton participates in shaming them.

She donated big bucks to the Vanderbilt medical research group that helped develop the vaccine.

[FakeNoose]

30. Yes there were many private donors but Dolly Parton was all in for lots of cash

Not to mention all the money our government paid the pharmaceuticals in the last 2 years.

[Blues Heron]

22. Pharma-bro Bull...

These pricks will never stop pulling this until we get national healthcare for all.

[2naSalit]

35. That is the...

Best remedy for this, period.

[Johonny]

23. No doubt the GOP house will get right on that . . .

[BlueCheeseAgain]

24. The cost of manufacturing is always very little.

All the cost is in development. Saying a vaccine shot should only cost $2.85 based on that is misguided.

It's the same way for many other things. The cost of streaming a movie is virtually zero. The cost of printing a book is virtually zero. The cost of a software license is virtually zero. Should all those things be free?

[BumRushDaShow]

53. Actually in this case

due to the product being an injectable biologic, it does have a higher cost for quality control due to a requirement for an aseptic environment, consistent concentration of active ingredient per vial, and the ultra-low freezer storage requirements for holding long term.

[judesedit]

31. No words

[OMGWTF]

32. Dolly Parton donated $1M to develop the Moderna vaccine.

[dalton99a]

65. +1

[housecat]

33. Sue them

[2naSalit]

36. Perhaps...

An Executive Order is appropriate here.

[fescuerescue]

38. Given how critical it was in saving humanity

They should be forced to provide it at cost.

[kacekwl]

55. That's the problem, no one denies a

for profit company to make money. Its the OBSCENE profit that is totally unnecessary. Do top executives of every company have to make hundreds of millions of dollars ? On top of perks, benefits etc.? I'm all for folks making a good living but come on especially when so many of them are on government welfare, errr,ah subsidies.

[Turbineguy]

56. This tactic may make it too expensive for many trump voters.

I mean it's either "own the libs" or send money to poor Alex Jones or the NRA.

Maybe they can make it up with a discount on AR-15s.

[onecaliberal]

57. Good thing they own enough elected government officials.

We are just fucked over at every turn. Every god damn turn.

[tavernier]

58. But here's the thing, they are not the only game in town.

People can get the vaccine elsewhere for a reasonable price and very soon they will go bankrupt. Isn’t that capitalism?

[Freethinker65]

60. +100. Exactly. Moderna needs to start making a profit.

They will have competition. They will need to not only quality control produce the product, but also, store, promote, and distribute it.

It was never $2.84/dose post manufacture.

It is currently in everyone's best interest that they continue to produce this product and not turn their production to something less life saving but potentially more lucrative.

Competition will control the price and profit.

[inthewind21]

61. lol

"Competition will control the price and profit." Now that's funny.

[Skittles]

62. you know it, inthewind21

these days they're more likely to be colluding