Source: United States Senator for Vermont – Bernie Sanders
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced on Wednesday that Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel will testify next month in front of the committee for a hearing entitled, “Taxpayers Paid Billions For It: So Why Would Moderna Consider Quadrupling the Price of the COVID Vaccine?”
In January, Sanders wrote to Bancel – who became a billionaire after U.S. taxpayers gave his company billions of dollars to research, develop, and distribute its Covid-19 vaccine – urging the chief executive to refrain from more than quadrupling the price of the vaccine to as much as $130 while it costs just $2.85 to manufacture. “As you know, the federal government, over the years, has supported Moderna every step of the way going back to 2013 when your company reportedly only had three employees,” Sanders wrote at the time. “Now, in the midst of a continuing public health crisis and a growing federal deficit, is not the time for Moderna to be quadrupling the price of this vaccine. Now is not the time for unacceptable corporate greed.”
The committee majority on Wednesday also released a staff report on the rapid growth of pharmaceutical CEO compensation packages during the pandemic. Among the findings is that 50 pharmaceutical executives in 10 companies made $1.9 billion in 2021 and could receive $2.8 billion in golden parachutes, 10 pharmaceutical CEOs could receive $1.6 billion in golden parachutes, and 10 pharmaceutical companies made $102 billion in profits in 2021 – a 137 percent increase from 2020.
Bancel will testify at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 22.
He will be joined by the following expert witnesses: Ameet Sarpatwari, Ph.D., J.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Christopher J. Morten, Ph.D, J.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; and Craig Garthwaite, Ph.D., M.P.P., Herman Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services Management, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
To read the Majority’s staff report on pharmaceutical greed, click here.