Senators accuse Pfizer of ‘pure and deadly greed’ over plan to quadruple cost of Covid shot

Democrats have attacked Pfizer over its plan to quadruple the price of its Covid vaccine next year, describing the company as “pure, deadly greed.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Senator-elect Peter Welch of Vermont sent a scathing letter to the pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, Albert Bourla, on Monday, urging him to change course.

Pfizer announced plans in October to increase the price of its shot to $130, once the government uses up the doses it bought and the vaccine hits the open market next year.

Lawmakers accused Pfizer of “improper profit” and warned it could prompt other Covid vaccine makers like Moderna to raise their price, making the vaccine unaffordable for the uninsured and raising premiums for who do have it.

Warren and Welch have joined forces to pressure pharmaceutical giant Pfizer not to raise the prices of its Covid vaccines, which could restrict availability to only people with money.

Since the vaccines were introduced, the US government has paid about $20 per dose, and the shots are free to Americans regardless of insurance status.

But short of the federal government purchasing millions of additional doses at a reasonable price, Pfizer plans to raise its price up to $130.

That represents a surcharge of 10,000 percent of the estimated $1.18 it costs the New York City-based company to produce each dose of the vaccine.

Sen Warren and Sen-elect Welch wrote: ‘This price increase represents pure and deadly greed on the part of the company, and could result in COVID-induced deaths of many uninsured Americans who may not be able to afford the vaccine.’

The cost of vaccines will soon be negotiated with insurance companies and private buyers, not the federal government.

The Biden Administration’s Covid funding is drying up. Congress has resisted calls from the White House to beef up federal money for new vaccines, research and development, treatments and testing supplies.

Progressive lawmakers have demanded answers from the drugmaker by January 9.

Some of the lawmakers’ questions include how much revenue the company expects to generate in 2023, factoring in price increases, and the estimated number of patients who won’t be able to afford the increased price of the new vaccine.

“Thanks to the billions of federal dollars used to support the production and delivery of Pfizer’s vaccine product, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is currently free to patients in the United States,” Warren and Welch said.

‘But this progress is now in jeopardy due to Pfizer’s greed. We urge you to back down from the proposed price increases and ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are reasonably priced and accessible to people across the United States.”

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has come under fire in recent months for price hikes, despite promises that the shot will remain free for Americans regardless of whether they have insurance.

Bourla has amassed millions in personal wealth since the start of the pandemic, and the company has amassed about $80 billion in annual revenue from sales of Covid vaccines and the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

The company’s chief financial officer told investors last month that they expect the cash flow to continue as the fight against covid ‘will be a multi-billion dollar franchise in the sense that this will be something like a flu, a sustained flu. , but actually deadlier than the flu.’

Pfizer is not the only Covid vaccine maker considering steep price increases. Moderna, the maker of another mRNA Covid vaccine, is said to be considering raising the commercial price from $82 to $100 per dose.

The progressive lawmakers argued in their letter that once Pfizer changes the price of vaccine doses, Moderna and another vaccine maker, Novavax, will surely follow suit, “harming Americans seeking protection against COVID-19 and potentially worsening an ongoing public health crisis.”

The federal government has spent a staggering $30 billion on covid vaccines since the first ones became available in late December 2020.

Included in that total is the cost of developing and mass-producing the bivalent vaccines that target the parent and omicron strains of Covid-19. Those boosters, however, have been greeted with less than stellar enthusiasm.

Less than 14 percent of eligible Americans five years and older have received a bivalent booster, compared with a staggering 73 percent who completed the original two-shot regimen.

Public health authorities have struggled to rally support around the latest booster shot as the public grows increasingly fatigued with all things Covid.

The Biden administration redoubled its efforts to encourage apathetic Americans to get the booster, announcing a six-week blitz in November aimed at “reaching out to seniors and communities hardest hit by COVID-19 to make it more convenient get vaccinated and raise awareness. through paid media.’