The U.S. government does not have the authority to dictate what private manufacturers can charge for a new vaccine, unlike European countries.
If a vaccine for coronavirus is developed there is no guarantee that every American will be able to afford it, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers earlier this week. However, other health experts say that won’t be the case if the government pays for the development of a vaccine.
That said, it can cost $1 billion to fund the research and development of a new vaccine, according to a 2018 study published in Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal. On top of which, after months of testing, there is a 94% chance of failure, according to the authors of the study. Because of this, vaccine manufacturers often accept federal funding which allows the government to have a say in terms of pricing it.
“It should be really cheap,” he said, to manufacture a vaccine once testing is complete. Coburn, an affordable drug pricing advocate, formerly served as a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative economic policy think-tank. Others are more skeptical. Dr. Peter Bach, director at the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, does not believe the private sector will have an incentive to make a vaccine affordable.
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