QUICK READ: Pfizer is already positioning their Covid vaccine as a yearly maintenance shot. In other words, they want to milk this cash cow for every penny they can get out of the healthcare system. Make no mistake; the drug companies will make a lot of money from these vaccines while they continue to hide profits offshore.
(New York Times) If you listen to the stated intentions of vaccine producers. Executives at Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the three companies whose coronavirus vaccines have been approved for emergency use in the United States, have said they will maintain their current pricing models during the pandemic but expect to raise prices after it ends. Frank D’Amelio, Pfizer’s chief financial officer, recently said that in a postpandemic environment, “obviously, we’re going to get more on price,” noting that vaccine prices are normally $150 to $175 per dose.
The news media is already using pharma company talking points about the long term protection of the vaccines even though they have been in use only a short time. The Times says “many experts now predict that Covid-19 booster shots will become a regular part of our lives for years. An increase in the price of coronavirus vaccines would have considerable impact on American health care spending. If Pfizer raised the price of its coronavirus vaccine from $19.50 per dose to $175, a yearly shot for every American adult would cost $44.7 billion and could increase annual U.S. drug spending by 9 percent”.
Drug Companies Are Working The System
President Biden is going after companies that use offshore as tax havens. Endpoint News said yesterday, “the IRS has battled Big Pharma for years over offshore patent transfer schemes, which it said have bilked the public interest by billions of dollars. Now, loose lips at the agency have revealed its pursuit of another drugmaker — Bristol Myers Squibb — that it says is on the hook for more than $1 billion in back taxes”.
In a 2018 report, Oxfam estimated that offshoring schemes were saving those four drugmakers around $2.3 billion per year in US federal taxes. In total across nine developing countries including the US, Oxfam estimated the firms were writing off around $3.7 billion per year.
Kyle Blankenship, Endpoint News
Pharma is great at playing the victim, but time and time again, they continue to demonstrate, through their actions, that they are big business and their primary objective is profits. Americans need the drugs that pharma produces but do pharma companies have the right to pay CEOs millions of dollars in compensation while this nation’s healthcare system is so costly?
Pharma is not alone, of course. Small hospitals are being taken over by big corporations whose sole purpose is to take in as much money as possible from patients and insurers. PBM’s also take a huge slice of money from insurers and patients without providing much value.
Results From 2000 to 2018, 35 large pharmaceutical companies reported cumulative revenue of $11.5 trillion, gross profit of $8.6 trillion, EBITDA of $3.7 trillion, and net income of $1.9 trillion, while 357 S&P 500 companies reported cumulative revenue of $130.5 trillion, gross profit of $42.1 trillion.
Changes are coming to this nation’s healthcare system because of the simple fact that the current trend in healthcare costs is unsustainable. Right now, however, it’s milk the system for Wall Street.