Here’s why a COVID-19 vaccine could end up costing you a small fortune. From Davidlaz:
Things have gone from bad to worse for Brian Helstien. For a decade, he’s been grappling with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Now he needs surgery for a leaky heart valve.
Helstien faces a list price of nearly $20,000 a month for his cancer pills, although his out-of-pocket cost with insurance is much lower.The harsh reality is that the United States is one of the few developed countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to charge whatever they want for prescription drugs — even when production costs are just a fraction of the list price.
Thanks to his Kaiser Medicare Advantage coverage, Helstien pays only an $11.20 co-pay for each drug purchase. That’s good for him, but it doesn’t mitigate the jaw-dropping list prices set by Celgene, which affect all insurers and their policyholders in the form of higher premiums.Nor does it let Medicare off the hook from paying such sky-high amounts.
Remember thalidomide? It was a sedative discovered in the 1950s that was prescribed to pregnant women worldwide to relieve anxiety and morning sickness.Researchers later found that thalidomide caused irreversible birth defects, with thousands of children born with severe malformations and many not surviving more than a few days. It was one of the darkest episodes in the history of the global drug industry.
Celgene’s new parent, Bristol-Myers, rejects suggestions that its thalidomide-based drugs are wildly overpriced. That’s a more straightforward, if disturbing, explanation — with profound implications for the list price of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, which could be available by next year.
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