The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Lawmakers seek to curb price of virus drugs created by federal aid
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers want to use the billions of dollars the U.S. government is pouring into coronavirus treatment and vaccine development to negotiate down the price of those drugs when and if they reach the market.
Congress has appropriated over $30 billion for pharmaceutical development in response to the coronavirus crisis, in three relief packages passed this spring and that money should come with some price accountability, said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3. She leads the subcommittee overseeing the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), both of which have made grants to companies.
DeLauro and four other House members say that support should buy the taxpayers a say in the prices the companies charge for the vaccines and medical counter-measures financed by the public — and in information about the drugs.
“Today we are saying that a public health crisis should not be allowed to become a for-profit bonanza,” DeLauro said Monday. “Because taxpayers have contributed to this research and development, they should receive in return full transparency into the investments and affordable access to their results.”
Congress has also required coronavirus testing and a future vaccine to be covered by public or private insurers without costsharing for the patient. The Trump administration recently pledged that any vaccine for coronavirus will be free for “vulnerable” Americans who can’t afford it.
But even with these efforts to prevent vaccine costs from hitting the consumer, sky-high coronavirus drug prices paid by the U.S. government could ultimately mean a bill for taxpayers, while pharmaceutical companies see big payoffs.
The lack of a link between U.S. research support and final consumer prices has long been a source of friction in pharmaceuticals as well as other technology development.
DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, Francis Rooney, R-Fl., and Peter DeFazio, D-Or., introduced legislation Monday to leverage public payments in COVID-19 drugs to make them more affordable for consumers and win information from pharmaceutical companies on drug development costs.
A COVID-19 vaccine — the result of a worldwide race invlving numerous companies, including Paris-based Sanofi at its Protein Sciences unit in Meriden — could bring heated debates over pricing because it would instantly have near universal demand.
Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is rushing to help develop, manufacture and distribute 300 million doses of an effective COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021.
BARDA has distributed billions of dollars to companies such as AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi to spur clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines, while HHS has signed contracts worth hundreds of millions with companies that will produce the syringes and vials for vaccines.
NIH has also invested millions in potential treatments for COVID-19, like remdesivir, a drug made by Gilead Sciences that has been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use for hospitalized patients with severe disease.
DeLauro and Doggett pressed HHS in early May for a full accounting of government investments in remdesivir, government ownership of remdesivir patents and federal efforts to scale up production.
If passed, the legislation introduced Monday would prohibit pharmaceutical monopolies on COVID-19 drugs and require the government to mandate reasonable, affordable pricing for any such drug. It would require companies receiving COVID-19 government research funds to publicly report the costs of developing their treatments and how much was paid for by federal dollars.
Another bill would create a database of all financial and non-financial support for pharmaceutical companies, and would require clinical trial data and agreements between the government and manufacturers to be published.
Illustrating just how expensive coronavirus drugs could be, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit that analyzes drug pricing, reported if the price of remdesivir was set based on the cost of product, a 10-day course should be about $10. But if the drug were priced based on its effectiveness and demand, it could climb up to $4,500.
Gilead has announced it will donate an initial supply of 1.5 million doses of remdesivir, but after that it will have to put a price tag on the medication. Gilead said in May its investment in remdesivir in 2020 could be “up to $1 billion or more,” according to public filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers in both parties supported the idea of using Congress’s buying power through Medicare to try to lower prescription drug prices but were unable to agree on specific legislation to do it. That issue has been debated for more than 20 years.