Pharma is fleecing the U.S. government
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
From the start of the pandemic, Covid-19 has meant huge profits for some pharmaceutical companies at the expense of human health and well-being.
Big Pharma pushed furiously to block generic vaccines, hiring an army of lobbyists including Democratic Party insiders like Howard Dean. In India, health care capitalists used their duopoly to jack up prices, leading to deadly delays of the vaccine rollout.
Now, reporting from The Intercept shows that the pharmaceutical giant Merck is charging the U.S. government 40 times what it costs to produce molnupiravir, the first oral antiviral treatment for Covid-19.
Adding insult to injury, American taxpayers spent $29 million developing the drug, and now we’re getting massively gouged for the drug our taxes helped develop.
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The Covid-19 treatment pill should be a huge advance in the world’s battle against the virus. It’s expected to be more widely used than monoclonal antibodies, which must be delivered intravenously. Clinical trials show that it could cut the death rate in half.
A five-day course of the drug costs only $17.74 to produce, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and King’s College Hospital in London estimate.
Yet Merck is selling a five-day course in the United States for $712, and the price tag will likely go up once the drug hits the market.
“It’s a great coup that the American government funded some scientists to develop antivirals,” one researcher told us. “The great tragedy is that, after their great success, they just gave it away to private industry with apparently no strings attached.”
Pandemic profiteering has led to deadly delays in the rollout of vaccines worldwide, and now companies are price gouging for treatments. Our hard-hitting investigative journalism is digging deep to uncover how corporate greed is harming public health.
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The Intercept team
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