COVID vaccine price update

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, the US government spent about $30 billion to accelerate and de-risk vaccine development. The main Pfizer and Moderna vaccines already got a price increase of over 50% from the initial pricing. Now, both Pfizer and Moderna are going to jack the price up by an additional ~400% to about $100-$120 per dose. 

The increase is not due to inflation or supply chain problems. It is due to greed and a complete lack of any require or logical connection between cost and benefit in America's unregulated, for-profit capitalist health care system. KFF writes:

The federal government has spent more than $30 billion1 on COVID-19 vaccines, including the new bivalent boosters, incentivizing their development, guaranteeing a market, and ensuring that these vaccines would be provided free of charge to the U.S. population. However, the Biden Administration has announced that it no longer has funding, absent further Congressional action, to make further purchases and has begun to prepare for the transition of COVID-19 vaccines to the commercial market. This means that manufacturers will be negotiating prices directly with insurers and purchasers, not just the federal government, and prices are expected to rise.

The federal government has so far purchased 1.2 billion doses of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines combined, at a cost of $25.3 billion, or a weighted average purchase price of $20.69 per dose. In mid-2020, months before any COVID-19 vaccine was yet authorized or had even completed clinical trials, the federal government purchased an initial 200 million vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna (100 million each), at a price of $19.50 per dose and $15.25 per dose, respectively.

Once again, unregulated capitalist markets get to run free, wild and butt naked in their pursuit of greed-driven profit above all other considerations. Maybe that explains this:

By Germaine: The cost-benefit analysis advocate