'We agree that vaccines should be free': Moderna's Noubar Afeyan
Moderna (MRNA) has decided to set its COVID-19 vaccine price per dose at $110-$130 when it hits the commercial market this year, according to CEO Stéphane Bancel.
Bancel told the Wall Street Journal the price was in line with the value, during the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco this week. It mirrors the range Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE/BNTX) announced, but is slightly higher than the range Moderna suggested last year, which was $82-$100.
The price is far from extravagant, with vaccines that can cost upwards of $250 per dose, but it is already getting push back from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), who said in a letter Tuesday it was "unacceptable corporate greed" in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
Meanwhile, Congress has been unwilling to fund more vaccine purchases as uptake has slowed and the new GOP-led House of Representatives aims to analyze the trillions of dollars spent on the COVID-19 response.
Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and board chair of Moderna, said that any push back is conflating price pressure on drugs with vaccines, which should be treated separately.
"We agree vaccines ought to be free. Governments ought to purchase them to prevent disease. That's very different than [the idea that] people ought to innovate and come up with more effective, more programmable approaches, and essentially give them away," Afeyan told Yahoo Finance in an interview Tuesday at the conference.
He also noted that the economic value of a vaccine — preventing costly hospital visits — differs from the public health view of a vaccine's role.
"I think it's a hard argument to make in value-based pricing to say that vaccines ought to be priced at 10 cents ... That, I think, comes not form the economic argument, that comes from the public health argument," Afeyan said.
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