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To Avoid Covid Inequities in Next Pandemic, Sanders Says WHO Treaty Must Put 'Health Over Profits'
"The life of a millionaire in New York City is not worth more than the life of a person living in extreme poverty in South Sudan."
Nov 07, 2023
As advocates warn of glaring inadequacies in a draft of the global pandemic treaty under negotiation at the World Health Organization, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday urged the country's lead negotiator "to push for the inclusion of strong reasonable pricing, technology sharing, and access standards" in the agreement.
"Now is the time to negotiate strong global standards that put public health over profits," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a letter to Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto, U.S. negotiator for the pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response accord, a proposed treaty that 194 WHO member states agreed to draft in response to the Covid-19 emergency.
The WHO's Intergovernmental Negotiating Body is meeting from Monday through Thursday in Geneva to debate the latest draft of the proposed accord.
"The U.S. should champion including reasonable pricing and technology sharing requirements into all funding agreements with pharmaceutical companies," asserted Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. "That is not just the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do to protect the American people from viruses that respect no borders."
Sanders' office said in a statement:
During the Covid-19 pandemic, there were vast inequities in access to... tests, treatments, and vaccines. One study estimated that vaccine inequality cost 1.3 million lives by the end of 2021. U.S. taxpayers spent $12 billion on the research, development, and procurement of one of the leading vaccines. Yet, Moderna refused to share its technology with other manufacturers to increase global production, charged some poorer countries more for doses than wealthy countries, and then quadrupled the price of the Covid vaccine to $128—at a time when it costs just $2.85 to manufacture that vaccine.
"The mistakes made with Moderna cannot be repeated," Sanders wrote in his letter. "A public health crisis should not be an opportunity for profiteering. We need real international cooperation and commitment to ensuring equitable access to pandemic products."
"Our goal should be to make tests, treatments, and vaccines for the next public health outbreak available to every man, woman, and child who needs them as soon as possible," he added. "The life of a millionaire in New York City is not worth more than the life of a person living in extreme poverty in South Sudan."
The proposed treaty—a final draft of which is meant to be submitted for consideration by the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024—aims to build resilience to pandemics; ensure equitable access to pandemic countermeasures; support global coordination through a stronger and more accountable WHO; and support prevention, detection, and responses to outbreaks with pandemic potential.
"The new accord could represent a global commitment to work together, as an international community, to help prevent disease outbreaks from impacting individuals, communities, countries, and the world in the same way as the Covid-19 pandemic did," the WHO explained.
However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned Tuesday that "the current draft fails to enshrine core human rights standards protected under international law, most notably the right to health and the right to benefit from scientific progress, therefore risking a repeat of the tragic failures during the Covid-19 pandemic."
HRW's position is shared by the Global Initiative for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the International Commission of Jurists; and Amnesty International.
"Creating a new pandemic treaty could offer an opportunity to ensure that countries are equipped with proper mechanisms for cooperation and principles to prevent the level of devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rights violations resulting from government responses," Amnesty legal adviser Tamaryn Nelson said in a statement.
"By failing to ground the treaty in existing human rights obligations and inadequately addressing human rights concerns arising during public health emergencies, governments risk repeating history when the next global health crisis hits," Nelson added.
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Nobel Prize for mRNA Researchers Shows Power of Public Funding for Vaccines, Campaigners Say
"Public funding delivers incredible medical advances and that should be a priority for all countries, but pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted to share technology with the world."
Oct 02, 2023
Scientists Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for research that paved the way for the messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19—critical work that, as campaigners quickly pointed out, benefited from substantial U.S. government funding.
Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in a statement that "this award challenges the claim that it was solely big pharmaceutical companies who saved the world from Covid-19."
"Just like the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Karikó and Weissman's groundbreaking work on mRNA vaccines received a huge amount of public funding," said Kamal-Yanni. "Pharmaceutical companies have refused to share mRNA technologies with developers and researchers in developing countries."
The Nobel Prize committee credited Karikó and Weissman with fundamentally changing "our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system."
"The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times," the committee said.
As The Washington Post summarized, the pair "discovered how to chemically tweak messenger RNA, turning basic biology into a technology ready to change the world when the pandemic struck. Their discovery is incorporated into the coronavirus vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, which have now been given billions of times."
But the Post and other major outlets covering Karikó and Weissman's Nobel prize-winning contributions did not emphasize—or even mention—that some of the scientists' work was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Karikó and Weissman patented their findings in 2006 and later licensed the patents to Moderna and BioNTech, Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine partner.
According to an analysis by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), Weissman "appears as the principal investigator on a total of 42 projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 1998 and 2020, representing $18,323,060 in costs."
"Karikó was the principal investigator of four projects funded by the NIH between 2007 and 2011, totaling $1,234,462 in costs," KEI observed. "In other words, the United States government funded and has certain rights over at least some of the foundational Karikó and Weissman patents directed to mRNA discoveries."
"As governments discuss how to prepare for the next pandemic, they should learn from the story of mRNA."
Throughout the pandemic and into the present, vaccine makers such as Pfizer and Moderna have opposed global calls to share their vaccine recipes and technology with the world, fiercely clinging to their monopoly control over production and using that control to force governments into one-sided contracts favorable to the pharmaceutical industry—even though their vaccines were developed with massive public support.
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study published in The BMJ earlier this year estimated that the U.S. government pumped nearly $32 billion into the development, production, and purchase of mRNA coronavirus vaccines.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has declined to use its ownership of key patents or the leverage provided by public funding to force pharmaceutical companies to do everything they can to ensure the equitable distribution of lifesaving vaccine technology.
Kamal-Yanni of the People's Vaccine Alliance said Monday that "fortunately, Weissman is helping a WHO-backed mRNA program which aims to develop mRNA technology in lower-income countries, even while pharmaceutical companies refuse to share their know-how."
"As governments discuss how to prepare for the next pandemic, they should learn from the story of mRNA," said Kamal-Yanni. "Public funding delivers incredible medical advances and that should be a priority for all countries, but pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted to share technology with the world."
Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, echoed that message, saying in a statement that "today's Nobel must ring as a call for equity and health justice, and a call to change a massively unjust pharmaceutical industry."
"Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech still largely control the available vaccines and in some countries have significantly increased their price, despite the billions in public funding on which the vaccines rely," said Maybarduk. "By supporting initiatives to share science and technology, and by funding vaccine infrastructure, governments can help blunt the effects of disease, and bring a coda of justice to a terribly unjust time."
This story has been updated to include a statement from Public Citizen.
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Bernie Sanders Targets Moderna Greed in Covid-19 Vaccine Hearing
"Should people in America and around the world be allowed to get sicker and sometimes die because they cannot afford the outrageous and arbitrary prices that the pharmaceutical industry demands?" asked the Vermont Independent.
Mar 22, 2023
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday denounced Moderna's proposal to more than quadruple the price of the Covid-19 vaccine it co-developed with billions of dollars in public funding—along with mRNA technology co-invented by government scientists—as an example of Big Pharma's "unacceptable corporate greed."
At a hearing held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), the Vermont Independent reiterated his widely shared belief that the purpose of medical advancements should be to save as many lives as possible, not make executives "obscenely rich."
Sanders, who chairs the panel, invited Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to testify at a hearing titled "Taxpayers Paid Billions For It: So Why Would Moderna Consider Quadrupling the Price of the Covid Vaccine?"
In his opening statement, Sanders stressed that scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies "worked with Moderna to research, develop, and distribute the Covid vaccine that so many of our people have effectively used."
"While Moderna may wish to rewrite history," Sanders continued, "this vaccine would not exist without NIH's partnership and expertise and the substantial investment of the taxpayers of this country. As a matter of public record, U.S. taxpayers spent $12 billion on the research, development, and procurement of the NIH-Moderna Covid vaccine."
"For that huge investment," added the progressive lawmaker, Moderna is "thanking the taxpayers of America by proposing to quadruple the price of the Covid vaccine to as much as $130 once the government stockpile runs out—at a time when it costs just $2.85 to manufacture that vaccine."
"Moderna has already made $21 billion in profits off of the Covid vaccine during the pandemic and four of Moderna's executives and investors collectively became more than $10 billion wealthier as a result of the massive taxpayer investment into that corporation," said Sanders. "Mr. Bancel literally became a billionaire overnight and is now worth $4.7 billion."
"Do we not need to change the current culture of greed into a culture which understands that science and medical breakthroughs should work for ordinary people, and not just enrich large corporations and CEOs?"
In the words of the senator, "This type of profiteering and excessive CEO compensation is exactly what the American people are sick and tired of."
In response to a letter Sanders sent to Bancel following Moderna's January announcement of its planned price hike, the corporation vowed to make Covid-19 vaccines and boosters "available at no cost for the vast majority of people in the United States." Last month, after Bancel agreed to testify at Wednesday's hearing, Moderna said that when the federal government's public health emergency declaration expires in May, "Covid-19 vaccines will continue to be available at no cost for insured people," while the company's patient assistance program "will provide Covid-19 vaccines at no cost" to uninsured or underinsured people.
"That is good news," Sanders said Wednesday. "The bad news is that most patient assistance programs are poorly designed and are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for patients to access," he added, urging Moderna "to reconsider their decision to quadruple the price of this vaccine and not raise the price at all."
"Our committee looks forward to working with Moderna to develop a program that allows every American to continue to receive the Covid vaccine for free without the need to file complicated forms or paperwork, answer personal questions, or wait for hours on end at the pharmacy," said Sanders. "In other words, let us truly make this vaccine available for free to all Americans."
But when asked by Sanders if Moderna will charge the U.S. government less for the NIH-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, Bancel refused to commit, citing so-called "complexity."
"You have money for stock buybacks by the billions, and you guys became billionaires," Sanders responded. "That doesn't seem too complex to me."
In a video shared Tuesday, Senate HELP Committee senior health counsel Zain Rizvi further detailed how Moderna has tried to suppress evidence of the U.S. public's massive contributions to the NIH-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine while refusing to share the recipe with South African scientists who are working with the World Health Organization to boost global supply.
The refusal of Moderna and other pharmaceutical corporations to transfer publicly funded technology to qualified generic manufacturers has contributed to global Covid-19 vaccine apartheid, needlessly prolonging and worsening the pandemic.
Although Covid-19 jabs have been credited with preventing roughly 20 million deaths worldwide in 2021 alone, researchers estimate that 1.3 million additional lives could have been saved in the first year of the vaccine rollout had shots been distributed equitably. As a result of unequal access to lifesaving Covid-19 vaccines—made worse by corporate-friendly trade rules that protect Big Pharma's intellectual property monopolies and lead to artificial scarcity—one person suffered an avoidable death from the disease every 24 seconds in 2021.
"Moderna has taken a publicly funded vaccine, built on decades of publicly funded research, and used it to maximize their own profits at the expense of public health," Julia Kosgei, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said Wednesday in a statement. "It's long past time for Stéphane Bancel to be held to account."
"Today's hearing must be the beginning of a conversation about how governments can place public health needs before private profit. That means requiring companies that profit from publicly funded research to share new technologies with the world."
Citing the corporation's latest earnings report, Kosgei noted that "Moderna is spending as much on buybacks and dividends as it is on research and development." She called it "plainly ludicrous to suggest that this is the best way to ensure everyone has access to effective vaccines and medicines."
"This should be a moment of reckoning for Big Pharma," said Kosgei. "Today's hearing must be the beginning of a conversation about how governments can place public health needs before private profit. That means requiring companies that profit from publicly funded research to share new technologies with the world."
Like Kosgei, Rizvi stressed that Moderna's behavior is not unique and called for far-reaching action "to put an end to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry."
That's also precisely what Sanders did during his opening remarks:
In the pharmaceutical industry today we are looking at an unprecedented level of corporate greed—and that is certainly true with Moderna. Today, while 37% of the American people could not afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, 10 major pharmaceutical companies made over $100 billion dollars in profits in 2021—a 137% increase from the previous year. In these corporations, the 50 top executives made over $1.9 billion in total compensation in 2021 and are in line to receive billions more in golden parachutes once they leave their companies. In other words, Americans die because they cannot afford the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, while the drug companies make huge profits.
Further, while many Americans don't know this, the taxpayers of this country have spent many tens of billions of dollars over the past decade to research and develop life-saving medicine. Yet, despite that huge investment, and the vitally important work done by NIH scientists, the citizens of the United States pay far more for prescription drugs than do the people of any other country, in some cases, as much as 10 times more. Unbelievably, there are important drugs on the market today that literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"What does a lifesaving drug mean for a person who cannot afford to buy that drug?" Sanders asked. "Should people in America and around the world be allowed to get sicker and sometimes die because they cannot afford the outrageous and arbitrary prices that the pharmaceutical industry demands?"
"Do we not need to change the current culture of greed into a culture which understands that science and medical breakthroughs should work for ordinary people, and not just enrich large corporations and CEOs?" he continued.
Sanders urged people "to remember the contributions of great scientists like Dr. Jonas Salk who, in the 1950s, invented the vaccine for polio. Salk's work saved millions of lives and prevented millions more from being paralyzed."
According to the progressive lawmaker: "It has been estimated that if Dr. Salk had chosen to patent the polio vaccine he would have made billions of dollars. But he did not. When asked who owns the patent to this vaccine Dr. Salk said: 'Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?' What Dr. Salk understood was that the purpose of the vaccine he invented was to save lives, not to make himself obscenely rich."
Salk was not alone, as Sanders explained:
In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a scientist from Scotland, discovered penicillin at St. Mary's hospital in London. Fleming's discovery of penicillin changed the medical world and saved millions of lives.
When Fleming was asked about his role, he did not talk about the outrageous fortune he could have made through his discovery. Instead, he said: "I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident." He refused to make obscene profits from his discovery.
In 1921, Dr. Frederick Banting along with two other scientists at the University of Toronto invented insulin—an issue we're hearing a lot about today. When Dr. Banting was asked why he wouldn't patent insulin and why he sold the rights to insulin for just $1 he replied: “Insulin does not belong to me. It belongs to the world.”
It has been estimated that Dr. Banting's invention saved some 300 million lives. Once again, a great scientist made it clear that his purpose in life was to ease suffering and save human lives, not to make billions for himself.
"In this moment of excessive corporate greed," said Sanders, "the moral vision of these great scientists is something that we might learn from."
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Pharma 'Myth' Debunked as Study Shows US Public Poured $32 Billion Into mRNA Vaccines
"Pharmaceutical companies have sold a false narrative to the public; that it was their investment which gave us mRNA vaccines and that they deserve the $75 billion profit."
Mar 02, 2023
Vaccine equity campaigners said Thursday that a new peer-reviewed study published in a major medical journal should put to rest the pharmaceutical industry's "false narrative" that its own investments were responsible for the rapid development of mRNA vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The study, published in The BMJ on Wednesday, estimates that the U.S. federal government has invested at least $31.9 billion in the development, production, and purchase of mRNA coronavirus vaccines—a finding that the People's Vaccine Alliance said undercuts pharmaceutical companies' attempts to take credit for the innovations that made the lifesaving shots possible.
"Pharmaceutical companies have sold a false narrative to the public; that it was their investment which gave us mRNA vaccines and that they deserve the $75 billion profit made from Covid-19 vaccines. As this research shows, that claim is a total myth," Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in a statement Thursday.
"Without public investment, there would be no mRNA vaccines. Yet just three pharmaceutical companies have been handed monopolies on this lifesaving public science," Kamal-Yanni continued. "These are the people's vaccines, and the technology behind them should be shared with the world."
The new study, which tracks U.S. public investments in mRNA vaccine technology dating back decades, identifies 34 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research grants that were "directly related to mRNA Covid-19 vaccines."
The authors summarized their findings:
Pre-pandemic, the NIH invested $116 million (35%) in basic and translational science related to mRNA vaccine technology, and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) ($148 million; 44%) and the Department of Defense ($72 million; 21%) invested in vaccine development. After the pandemic started, $29.2 billion (92%) of U.S. public funds purchased vaccines, $2.2 billion (7%) supported clinical trials, and $108 million (<1%) supported manufacturing plus basic and translational science...
These public investments translated into millions of lives saved and were crucial in developing the mRNA vaccine technology that also has the potential to tackle future pandemics and to treat diseases beyond Covid-19. To maximize overall health impact, policymakers should ensure equitable global access to publicly funded health technologies.
Though their successes were enabled at every step by government support, pharmaceutical companies—including Moderna and Pfizer, the manufacturers of the two available mRNA Covid-19 vaccines—have resisted the notion that federal research and funding was critical to the rapid development of coronavirus shots.
Speaking to Barron's in July 2020, before any coronavirus vaccines had received emergency authorization, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla scoffed at the notion that pharmaceutical companies should forgo any profits from coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics.
"I think it's very wrong. You need to be very fanatic and radical to say something like that right now," Bourla said. "Who is finding the solution? The private sector found the solution for diagnostics, and the private sector found the solution for therapeutics and is along [the] way to find more solutions for therapeutics and vaccines."
Pfizer posted $31.4 billion in profits in 2022, a sum advocates condemned as "sickening"—particularly as many people in low-income countries still lack access to coronavirus vaccines.
While Moderna's billionaire CEO Stéphane Bancel has acknowledged that "we didn't do this alone" and that government financial backing played an important role in the development of Covid-19 vaccines, the company is fighting with the NIH over patent rights to spike-protein technology that is central to the mRNA shots.
The New York Times reported last month that Moderna recently agreed to make a $400 million payment for using a chemical technique that was developed with government funding. The payment will be shared by the NIH and two U.S. universities involved in the invention of the technique.
But the Times noted that "Moderna is still locked in a separate high-stakes dispute with the NIH over who invented the central component of the vaccine, the genetic sequence that helps recipients produce an immune response."
Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, said in response to Moderna's $400 million payment that it "amounts to little more than 1% of its $36 billion in global sales."
"Considering Moderna's soup-to-nuts reliance on U.S. government support, the public deserves a much better deal, including vaccines made available free or at cost today," said Maybarduk. "The government should have insisted on affordability from the start, and should insist on essentially free vaccines today. There would be no NIH-Moderna vaccine without the NIH."
The People's Vaccine Alliance and Oxfam International echoed that sentiment in a statement earlier this week as a World Health Organization body kicked off negotiations over an international pandemic accord.
"Medical technologies related to pathogens with pandemic potential must be treated as global common goods—be available to all who need them at the same time," the groups said. "Global common goods must take precedence over private commercial interests."
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Moderna's 2022 Windfall a 'Scandalous' Result of Pandemic Profiteering, Campaigners Say
One advocate said Moderna's windfall was a "direct result of the company’s refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly."
Feb 23, 2023
The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine, which was made possible by federal funding and government technology.
"U.S. taxpayers and people all over the world should be furious," Maaza Seyoum, Global South convenor of the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Moderna's earnings report. "It was built on decades of publicly funded research into mRNA vaccines. And it was developed in partnership with the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This should be the people's vaccine, available and affordable to everyone, everywhere, not a goldmine for Big Pharma."
“Moderna's revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries," Seyoum noted. "Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries." As CNBC reported, "Moderna has contracts on the books for $5 billion in Covid vaccine deliveries for 2023."
Moderna sold $18.4 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine—the company's only product on the market—last year while rejecting calls to share critical technology with the rest of the world, denying low-income countries the ability to quickly produce lifesaving shots for their populations.
Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said Thursday that "history will not be kind to Moderna, whose scandalous profits are a direct result of the company's refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly."
"Millions of people around the world are now grieving the loss of family members, many of whom were unable to get a Covid-19 vaccine," said Bierley. "Moderna's pandemic profiteering is even more shocking given that the U.S. public-funded 100% of this vaccine's development. Now the company is brazenly threatening to hike prices on its vaccine—but governments should refuse to be held to ransom. And well before the next pandemic, we must make sure that taxpayer money comes with conditions that put lives above profits."
Moderna's earnings announcement came weeks after the company sparked widespread backlash by proposing to hike the U.S. price of its coronavirus vaccine by 4,000% over the cost of production.
Among those who condemned the planned price hike was Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has used his platform as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to call out Moderna and other pharmaceutical giants for exploiting health crises to pad their bottom lines.
Shortly after Sanders announced last week that he intends to grill Moderna's billionaire CEO on the vaccine price during a Senate hearing next month, the company said it would ensure its shot remains available for free in the U.S.
"This is an astounding reversal, entirely due to Bernie Sanders preparing to make Moderna a poster child of corporate greed, along with the public organizing against the company," said Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
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Sanders Excoriates 'Unprecedented' Greed of Big Pharma During Pandemic
The senator asked if it is "morally acceptable that tens of thousands of people die each year in this country because they cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe, while at the same time, the drug companies make billions of dollars in profits."
Feb 15, 2023
Asserting that Americans are "sick and tired of being ripped off" by Big Pharma during the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that Stéphane Bancel, Moderna's billionaire CEO, will testify next month before the Senate committee he chairs.
Last month, Sanders wrote to Bancel—who according to the committee "became a billionaire after U.S. taxpayers gave his company billions of dollars to research, develop, and distribute its Covid-19 vaccines"—urging the CEO to "refrain from more than quadrupling the price of the vaccine to as much as $130 while it costs just $2.85 to manufacture."
Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said the American people want to know "how does it happen that in the United States we pay by far... the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?"
"Why is it, people are asking, that nearly 1 out of every 4 Americans cannot afford the prescriptions their doctors write?" he added. "Think about how crazy that is."
"How does it happen that nearly half of all new drugs in the United States cost more than $150,000 a year?" Sanders asked. "How does it happen that in Canada and other major countries, [the] same exact same medications, manufactured by the same exact companies, are sold for a fraction of the price that we pay in America?"
According to a new HELP Committee report:
The answers to these questions are not complicated. In fact, they can be summed up in three words—unprecedented corporate greed.
Over the past 25 years, the pharmaceutical industry has spent $8.5 billion on lobbying and over $745 million on campaign contributions to get Congress and the government to do its bidding. Incredibly, last year, the drug companies hired over 1,700 lobbyists including the former congressional leaders of both major political parties—over three pharmaceutical industry lobbyists for every member of Congress. And it has paid off—big time.
"Meanwhile," said Sanders, "as Americans die because they cannot afford the medications they need, the pharmaceutical industry makes higher profits every year than other major industries, year after year after year."
"Between the years 2000 and 2018, drug companies in this country made over $8 trillion... in profits," the senator noted.
As the HELP Committee reported:
Ten of the top pharmaceutical companies in the U.S.—AbbVie, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Merck, Moderna, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Amgen, Gilead Sciences, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals—made a total of more than $102 billion in profits in 2021—a 137% increase from the previous year. In 2021 alone, 50 top executives in these 10 pharmaceutical companies took home over $1.9 billion in compensation and stock awards. Those 50 pharmaceutical executives are also in line to receive golden parachutes amounting to more than $2.8 billion when they depart the companies. Those golden parachutes are tied to the company's stock price and provide executives with massive payouts if they leave the company on good terms after hitting certain stock price targets—a tactic to ensure executives focus on increasing their company's stock prices at the expense of Americans who cannot afford their lifesaving medication.
"The question that I think Americans should be asking themselves," said Sanders, is if it is "morally acceptable that tens of thousands of people die each year in this country because they cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe, while at the same time, the drug companies make billions of dollars in profits and provide their CEOs with huge compensation packages?"
"The American people, regardless of their political affiliations, are sick and tired of being ripped off by the pharmaceutical industry," Sanders concluded. "Now is the time for us to have the courage to take on the 1,700 lobbyists all over Capitol Hill, to take on the unlimited financial resources of that industry. Now is the time to stand with the American people and substantially lower prescription drug prices in this country."
Moderna said Wednesday that its mRNA vaccine "will continue to be available at no cost for insured people" and that "for uninsured or underinsured people, Moderna's patient assistance program will provide Covid-19 vaccines at no cost."
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Pfizer's Record-Shattering $100 Billion in Revenue Denounced as 'Sickening'
"Put simply, Pfizer has plundered health systems for profit," said the People's Vaccine Alliance.
Jan 31, 2023
The U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer reported Tuesday that it brought in a record-breaking $100.3 billion in revenue in 2022 and $31.4 billion in profit, sums that campaigners decried as "sickening" in the face of an ongoing pandemic and persistent inequities in coronavirus vaccine access.
"In one year alone, Pfizer's revenue has exceeded the total health expenditures of more than 100 countries combined," Julia Kosgei, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in a statement. "If it were a country, Pfizer would sit in the wealthiest third of nation-states. And it has amassed this fortune while jacking up prices on Covid-19 vaccines amid a pandemic that has devastated people’s livelihoods. Put simply, Pfizer has plundered health systems for profit."
Pfizer, led by CEO Albert Bourla, is the manufacturer of one of the two available mRNA vaccines for Covid-19, as well as the oral coronavirus treatment Paxlovid. The company reported $56 billion in sales of its Covid-19 vaccine and Paxlovid, though it said it expects sales to drop in the coming year as it moves to hike prices significantly on its vaccine—a plan that has drawn international alarm and outrage.
Globally, more than 2,600 people are dying from Covid-19 each day on average. According to Our World in Data, just over 26% of people in low-income nations have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose as Pfizer and other pharmaceutical giants refuse to make their vaccine technology available to all—even though it was developed with the help of government funding and scientific advancements.
"Billions of people in developing countries still cannot access affordable Covid-19 medicines," said Kosgei. "Companies like Pfizer are gobbling up ever-greater proportions of health budgets and handing the spoils to wealthy shareholders—all while treating access for developing countries as little more than a PR initiative. We cannot go on like this."
The U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now called Pfizer's record earnings report "sickening."
"With this latest 'all-time high' announcement, Pfizer now has revenues higher than the GDP of 133 countries, including 8 E.U. member states, and is the first pharma company ever to make $100 billion in a year," noted Tim Bierley, the group's pharma campaigner. "But not content with doubling its revenues with a pandemic windfall, they are now still moving to aggressively hike the price of Covid-19 booster doses, putting even more pressure on already struggling public health systems."
"Their latest record-breaking revenues are further proof that the company treated the pandemic as an opportunity to enrich its shareholders," Bierley added. "We can't allow Big Pharma companies to hold us to ransom in this way. We need the government to be bold and break with the monopoly patent model that fails people everywhere. It's time to put people's lives above corporate profit."
"A people-funded vaccine should be cheap and freely available."
Both Pfizer and Moderna have signaled plans to raise the prices of their vaccines to somewhere between $110 to $130 per dose in the U.S. as the Biden administration moves ahead with the commercialization of coronavirus inoculations, tests, and treatments—shifting costs onto patients and insurers and leaving the uninsured to shoulder significant payments.
The U.S. government has previously paid around $30 per dose for Pfizer's vaccine.
In recent days, the Biden administration has faced growing calls to use the federal government's ownership of key patents and other leverage to force Moderna and Pfizer to make their vaccines affordable and readily available to all who want them.
"The Biden administration should not allow Moderna to more than quadruple the price of the Covid vaccine to $130 when it costs just $2.85 to produce," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted on Sunday. "The Covid vaccine must be used to save lives, not to further enrich the billionaire owners of Moderna."
Moderna and Pfizer are also facing backlash from lawmakers overseas over their planned price increases.
In a letter to Bourla and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Tuesday, British MP Caroline Lucas of the Green Party and three other lawmakers wrote that with the National Health Service "already under significant pressure and the costs of medicines increasing year on year, we are extremely concerned about the multiple impacts of a possible price hike."
"Throughout its development, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine received huge amounts of public money and support internationally," the lawmakers wrote. "Even the mRNA technology that Pfizer/BioNTech employed in the Covid-19 vaccine is rooted in decades of publicly funded research. A people-funded vaccine should be cheap and freely available."
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Moderna's Home State Newspaper to Biden: 'Play Hardball' Over Covid Vaccine Price Hike
"The Biden administration has not taken any serious steps to ensure that Moderna's vaccine will be reasonably priced—let alone accessible to anyone who wants it," wrote The Boston Globe's editorial board.
Jan 30, 2023
The largest daily newspaper in Moderna's home state of Massachusetts published an editorial on Sunday urging the Biden administration to "play hardball" with the pharmaceutical giant over its plan to raise the price of its Covid-19 vaccine by up to 4,000% over the cost of production, a proposal that has drawn backlash from vaccine equity campaigners and members of Congress.
The Boston Globe noted in its editorial that Moderna's reported plan to charge between $110 and $130 per dose for its mRNA vaccine—which was developed with the critical aid of U.S. government funding and scientific advances—would mean "more than quadrupling" the price compared to what the federal government paid in its latest contract with the company.
The coronavirus vaccine is Moderna's only product on the market, and stock price appreciation resulting from the development of the shot
helped make CEO Stéphane Bancel a billionaire.
"In 2021, Moderna made over $12 billion in profits, the first year it turned a profit since it was founded in 2010," the Globe's editorial board observed. "While Moderna's proposed sticker price mirrors Pfizer's commercial plans for the Covid vaccine that it developed with BioNTech, Moderna is in a worse position to defend such a drastic increase. Unlike Pfizer's vaccine, the clinical development of Moderna's mRNA vaccine was almost exclusively funded by the US government and included collaboration with scientists at the National Institutes of Health."
While the White House has voiced concerns over Moderna's planned price hike, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters earlier this month that it is hard to "understand or to justify," the Globe noted that "the Biden administration has not taken any serious steps to ensure that Moderna's vaccine will be reasonably priced—let alone accessible to anyone who wants it."
Citing public health advocates, the Globe argued that "the administration should be willing to play hardball" with Moderna, which has rebuffed pressure from governments and global institutions such as the World Health Organization to make its vaccine technology widely available, particularly for developing nations that have struggled to access a sufficient quantity of doses.
The editorial continued:
As Asia Russell, the executive director of the public health advocacy organization Health GAP, pointed out to the Globe editorial board, there is precedent for doing so.
In the midst of the 2001 anthrax attacks that targeted media and government offices, the U.S. government sought to boost its stockpile of Cipro, a drug that treats anthrax. Bayer, which produced the drug under a patent, balked at the George W. Bush administration's request for a discount. So Tommy Thompson, then secretary of Health and Human Services, threatened to bypass Bayer's patent and allow both production and purchase of generic alternatives. He didn't have to follow through on his threat; Bayer quickly agreed to dramatically reduce the drug's price.
The administration can also take—or deter Moderna's price hike by simply threatening to take—steps to slash the company's share of the market overseas.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the first member of Congress to publicly denounce Moderna's coming price hike, welcomed the Globe's editorial.
"The Boston Globe is right," Sanders wrote on Twitter. "The Biden administration should not allow Moderna to more than quadruple the price of the Covid vaccine to $130 when it costs just $2.85 to produce. The Covid vaccine must be used to save lives, not to further enrich the billionaire owners of Moderna."
Moderna's plans to raise the price of its coronavirus vaccine come as the Biden administration is shifting away from purchasing the shots and Covid-19 treatments and toward commercialization. As White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha put it in August, Covid-19 vaccines and treatments will be moved "into the regular healthcare system"—a hotbed of dysfunction, price gouging, and deadly denial of care.
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently noted that "while most consumers with public and private insurance will be protected from having to pay directly for vaccine costs, those who are uninsured and underinsured may face cost barriers when the federally-purchased vaccine doses are depleted."
In a letter to Moderna's CEO last week, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) warned that the firm's proposed price hike "threatens to reduce access to a lifesaving vaccine while boosting your company's profits."
"Thanks to billions of federal dollars used to support production and delivery of Moderna's vaccine product, Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine is currently free for patients in the United States," the senators wrote. "Over 665 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the U.S., and many million more worldwide, and more than 80% of the total U.S. population has received at least one dose."
"This is a landmark public health achievement," they continued. "But this progress may be put at risk because of Moderna's greed, which has the potential to increase vaccination costs for millions of un- and underinsured Americans."
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In Fox News Opinion Piece, Sanders Takes Aim at Big Pharma Greed
"How many more Americans must die before Congress finally has the guts to stop the pharmaceutical industry from getting away with murder?"
Jan 23, 2023
"Today, millions of Americans are making the unacceptable choice between feeding their families or buying the medicine they need. Seniors from Vermont to Alaska are forced to split pills in half and many have died because they did not have enough money to fill their prescriptions."
That's what U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in an opinion piece published Monday by Fox News as the two-time Democratic presidential candidate prepares to take charge of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Sanders stressed that despite national divisions, "on one of the most important matters facing our country the American people—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Progressives, Conservatives—could not be more united. And that is the need to take on the unprecedented corporate greed of the pharmaceutical industry and to substantially lower the outrageously high price of prescription drugs."
If Congress had the courage to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, we could cut the price of prescription drugs in America by at least 50%.
Various polls from the past two years show that 88% of U.S. adults support making it easier for generic medicines to come to market and restricting how much drug companies can increase prices each year while 83% support allowing the government to negotiate lower prices for Medicare and private insurance.
The Inflation Reduction Act signed last year by President Joe Biden contains modest drug pricing reforms—including allowing Medicare negotiation for some medicines—but not nearly at the scale that Sanders and others had advocated.
"All over this country, the American people are asking, why it is that they pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?" Sanders wrote. "Why is it that nearly 1 out of every 4 adults in America cannot afford their prescription medication? Why do nearly half of all new drugs in the United States cost more than $150,000 a year?"
"How is it that in Canada and other major countries the same medications manufactured by the same companies, sold in the same bottles are available for a fraction of the price that we pay in the United States?" the senator asked, recalling when, in 2019, he joined a busload of people with diabetes who traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Windsor, Ontario to buy insulin for a fraction of what they pay in the United States.
"The answers," he asserted, "can be summed up in three words: Follow the money."
Sanders noted the billions of dollars that Big Pharma has pumped into stock buybacks and political lobbying as well as the millions spent on campaign contributions in recent decades. He also pointed out the massive profits that industry giants rake in annually "as Americans die because they cannot afford the medications they need."
"Examples of corporate greed within the pharmaceutical industry are limitless. Let's start with Moderna," the senator wrote, detailing how the company "received $1.7 billion from U.S. taxpayers to research and develop the Covid-19 vaccine and billions more to distribute it to the American people," but now reportedly plans to hike the price.
As Common Dreams previously reported, Sanders expressed his outrage over Moderna's potential price increase for the vaccine—a 4,000% markup over its estimated production cost of less than $3 per dose and a quadrupling of the $26.36 price tag for the U.S. government—earlier this month in a letter to CEO Stéphane Bancel.
On Monday, Moderna was far from the senator's only target. He also called out Pfizer's ties to the Republican Party as well as Sovaldi for cashing in on a hepatitis C pill; Japanese drugmaker Astellas for increasing the U.S. price of the prostate cancer drug Xtandi; and Eli Lilly for hiking the price of the medical insulin Humalog.
"It does not have to be this way," Sanders argued. "The reality is that if Congress had the courage to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, we could cut the price of prescription drugs in America by at least 50%. How? By preventing the pharmaceutical industry from charging more for prescription drugs in the U.S. than they do in Canada, Britain, Germany, France and Japan—a concept that is not only supported by progressives, but former President Donald Trump. I will soon be re-introducing legislation in the Senate to do just that."
"A lifesaving drug is not effective if a person who needs that drug cannot afford it," he concluded. "How many more Americans must die before Congress finally has the guts to stop the pharmaceutical industry from getting away with murder?"
While Sanders' takeover of the Senate HELP Committee reportedly has some healthcare industry lobbyists worried—given his longtime criticism of corporate influence on Capitol Hill and support for policies to serve working people, slash drug costs, and create a public universal healthcare system—progress on those fronts is expected to be hampered over the next two years by right-wing Democrats and the GOP's narrow control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
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'The Sheer Greed Is Obscene': Moderna Plans 4,000% Markup for Covid Vaccine
"This vaccine isn't just Moderna's, it was developed in collaboration with a government agency," said one campaigner. "It should be available and affordable for everyone, everywhere."
Jan 10, 2023
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, telling The 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.
"We need to learn from this pandemic and break big pharma's monopolies."
Moderna's pricing plans come as the Biden administration is transitioning away from its free coronavirus vaccine program, shifting costs onto insurers and patients—and leaving the uninsured and underinsured with potentially significant bills.
In August, the Health and Human Services Department announced that "as early as January 2023, the administration anticipates no longer having federal funds to purchase or distribute vaccines and will need to transition these activities to the commercial market, similar to seasonal flu or other commercially available vaccines."
The Washington Post's Rachel Roubein noted Tuesday that "the federal government has paid far less for the company's vaccine than the potential price for commercial insurers. Moderna's updated booster shot cost the Biden administration about $26 per dose last summer, according to federal supply contracts."
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) warned in a recent policy brief that the commercial price of coronavirus shots "could discourage vaccination."
"The suggested average price for Covid-19 vaccines after commercialization ($96 to $115 per dose) is significantly higher than the commercial price for the annual flu vaccine ($18 to 28 per dose), and could be a cost barrier for the uninsured and underinsured, who have no guaranteed mechanism for receiving COVID-19 (or any) vaccines once federal supplies are depleted," KFF observed. "While most consumers with public and private insurance will be protected from having to pay directly for vaccine costs, those who are uninsured and underinsured may face cost barriers when the federally-purchased vaccine doses are depleted. In addition, as private payers take on more of the cost of vaccinations and boosters, this could have a small upward effect on health insurance premiums."
In a statement, Kosgei argued that "it doesn't have to be like this."
"The World Health Organization is supporting a program to share mRNA vaccine technology with producers in low and middle-income countries," said Kosgei. "In a future pandemic, this could rapidly supply doses for the entire world, but Moderna's patents are standing in the way. We need to learn from this pandemic and break big pharma's monopolies."
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