In a recent speech, Rep. Katie Porter (D-California) said, “We cannot continue to ask taxpayers to ... [+]
Rep. Katie Porter (D-California) had some choice words about pharmaceutical companies when it comes to the choice of Covid-19 vaccines. In a recent speech to her Congressional colleagues, she referred to the recent revelation that Pfizer and Moderna may raise the roof on Covid-19 mRNA vaccine prices four-fold up to the $110 to $130 per dose range, which I’ve covered for Forbes. She called it “jacking up the price tag on public health,” which probably wasn’t referring to anyone’s muscles. And for anyone who may say something like “not to worry, the free market will determine prices,” she then explained, “Just two vaccine manufacturers control 97% of the market. They will not compete because they do not have to.” Yeah, two may be better than one, according to that 2009 song from Boys Like Girls. But two certainly ain’t a lot of competition.
Porter shared a video clip of her speech via the following tweet:
As you can see, the clip began with a big opening: “I rise today in strong opposition to Big Pharma cheating taxpayers.” A little later in the clip, Porter emphasized, “Taxpayers contributed to every aspect of these vaccines from the underlying science to the clinical trials to purchasing agreements but only the manufacturers will profit.” She then mentioned that she is working on legislation to “prevent anti-competitive pricing and consolidated markets like vaccines. And this is especially important for products that our tax dollars paid for.” The clip concluded with her saying, “We cannot continue to ask taxpayers to help cover the risk while letting Pharma collude to reap the profits.”
Is the 97% number that Porter mentioned accurate? If you look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker’s “COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States” web page, you’ll find a breakdown of Covid-19 vaccinations administered to date by manufacturer. As of January 31, the original Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine comprised 55.3% of all Covid-19 vaccine doses that have been administered in the U.S., the Pfizer-BioNTech updated booster 4.6%, the Moderna original Covid-19 vaccine 34.7%, and the Moderna updated booster 2.6%. That means, combined, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines have totaled about 97.2% of all Covid-19 vaccinations that have occurred in this country. So, yes, the 97% number does check out if you go by the CDC’s data.
As evidenced by the remaining 2.8%, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 mRNA vaccines certainly aren’t the only Covid-19 vaccines currently on the U.S. market. You may have heard of the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) and the Novavax Covid-19 vaccines that use different mechanisms. But how often have political leaders mentioned these latter two vaccines? Maybe as often as people say, “I DuckDuckGo’d her name?” Over the past two years, you wouldn’t be lying if you had said that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines seemed to have received the lion’s share of attention.
It wasn’t always that way. Back in early 2020, a range of different research groups and manufacturers were working on Covid-19 vaccine candidates. As the alpha variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was spreading, it wasn’t completely clear which of these Covid-19 vaccine candidates would become the alphas of the group. At the time, the U.S. government could have put in stipulations that anyone receiving funding from taxpayer money would have to either pay back that money at some point or continue to provide the vaccines at some pre-specified affordable price for a pre-specified period of time. After all, that’s what banks and investors do, don’t they? A bank doesn’t just say, “Welcome. Have some money.”
At the time, there was enough competition for the U.S. government to have negotiated such terms. It’s not as if too many biotech or pharmaceutical companies would have said, “Oh, I don’t know. Billions of dollars. That sounds like a raw deal.” It was important for the government to put in stipulations before the U.S. became too heavily dependent on one or two manufacturers. That would have been the art of the deal, so to speak.
So the current situation may be due in large part to what the Trump Administration had negotiated or not negotiated back in 2020 with the various vaccine developers and manufacturers. That left the Biden Administration early on in 2021 rather stuck with whatever the Trump Administration had done the year before, for better or for worse. It was sort of like being given a specific tuxedo or dress just hours before prom with nothing else to wear.
Nevertheless, that was then. Two years have passed since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. So during two years, what’s been done to encourage more competition in the Covid-19 vaccine arena? Have political leaders given equal opportunities to the other Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by companies that have names that don’t rhyme with “incisor” or “taverna?” Well, as I covered for Forbes in October 2022, some have wondered why the Novavax vaccine hasn’t gotten more attention, especially since it uses a recombinant protein technology that has already been used for other vaccines like the Hepatitis B vaccine.
Also, how about mechanisms to encourage new Covid-19 vaccines to be developed? One shouldn’t simply settle for the currently available Covid-19 vaccines and assume that they are the best ones for the long run. That would have been like phoning it in once rotary phones were available. Or saying in 2000, “It doesn’t get better than the Palm Pilot and Friendster.” While the current vaccines do offer decent protection against Covid-19, they do have their limitations.
Innovation and fairer prices tend to happen when there is competition, not when there are monopolies. Monopolies may allow those doing the monopolizing to rest on their laurels. And resting on laurels in general isn’t a great thing. Laurels can be kind of prickly, and lack of effort to advance is not great for society. Besides if our country is not able to adapt and progress, the SARS-CoV-2 certainly will.
UPDATE (1/31/2023): The latest CDC breakdown of Covid-19 vaccinations by manufacturer has been added.
