Let’s be clear: The purpose of the recent taxpayer investment in Moderna was to protect our health and lives, not to turn a handful of corporate executives and investors into multi-billionaires. Moderna must NOT put outrageous corporate profits over public health.

Join more than 100,000 MoveOn members and sign my petition to tell Moderna: NO price-gouging the people-funded COVID-19 vaccine we all paid for! –Bernie Sanders

Dear MoveOn member,

Did you catch this important email I sent you last week about how Moderna is poised to put outrageous corporate profits over people? That's right—Moderna is planning to more than quadruple the people-funded COVID-19 vaccine price from $26.36 to $130, which is 4,500% more than the estimated $2.85 it costs to produce.

We, the taxpayers of this country, funded the research and development of this lifesaving vaccine to protect our health and lives, not to enrich the pharmaceutical industry. And if we come together now, we can stop Moderna from putting profits over people. 

Will you join more than 100,000 and sign my petition demanding that Moderna NOT gouge users of the people-funded COVID-19 vaccine? 

This is not new. This is all part of Big Pharma’s playbook, which forces the American people to pay outrageous prices for medical care, squeezing as much as it possibly can out of vulnerable people.

There is no rational reason, other than greed, for the pharmaceutical industry to charge the American people $98.70 for a standard unit of insulin that can be purchased in the United Kingdom for just $7.52, or $242 for the asthma inhaler that can be purchased for just $27 in Canada.

So it’s no surprise that Moderna would put profits over public health.

But if we get loud and continue to organize, we can put a stop to this unacceptable increase on the lifesaving, people-funded COVID-19 vaccine. Click here to add your name to my petition, then send it to 3 loved ones to spread the word.

Together, we can keep fighting for working people against the greed of powerful special interests like Big Pharma, until we have access to free, quality healthcare for all.

See my original email below.

In solidarity,

Senator Bernie Sanders

Sign my petition to tell Moderna: No price-gouging the lifesaving, people-funded COVID-19 vaccine! –Bernie Sanders

John,

Here we are, three years into the worst public health crisis in more than 100 years, where nearly 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 100 million more have become ill, yet Moderna is about to put outrageous corporate profits over public health.¹

Moderna is considering more than quadrupling the price of its people-funded COVID vaccine from $26.36 per dose (which is already almost 10x more than it costs to produce) to an outrageous $130 per dose, when it’s been estimated that the cost of producing the vaccine is now as low as $2.85 per dose.² This is absolutely unacceptable.

Will you add your name to my petition demanding that Moderna NOT gouge users of the people-funded COVID-19 vaccine?

Increasing the Moderna vaccine price to $130, which is 4700% more than it costs to produce, is especially unacceptable considering that the COVID-19 vaccines were jointly developed in partnership with scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—a U.S. government agency that is funded by U.S. taxpayers—and the federal government, which directly provided $1.7 billion to Moderna for research and development.³

If Moderna more than quadrupled the price of the vaccine, it would make it unaffordable to the very residents of this country who made the production of the vaccine possible, and it would also make the vaccine inaccessible to countries across the world. That is disgraceful.

This is why we must come together to push back against this unconscionable corporate greed. Add your name to my petition to tell Moderna: No price-gouging this life-saving vaccine!

This huge, unnecessary increase would have devastating impacts and would cause needless deaths and severe, long-term health challenges for so many due to the millions of Americans not able to afford the vaccine. It would make the vaccine unavailable and inaccessible for many millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans (especially low-income people, people with disabilities, Black communities, and communities of color) who won’t be able to afford it.

The price increase of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine would have a significantly negative impact on the budgets of Medicaid, Medicare, and other government programs that will continue covering the vaccine without cost-sharing for patients. It would cost taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars, and the outrageous price boost would increase private health insurance premiums—all while Moderna is able to produce the vaccines at a low cost.⁴ In a country where people don’t have access to free health care, this is very dangerous.

Will you sign my petition to demand that Moderna stop putting profits over people and stop the increase of the people-funded COVID-19 vaccine?

And in the midst of the worst public health crisis in the U.S., and while 1 out of 5 Americans cannot afford the medicine prescribed by their doctors, Moderna has made over $19 BILLION in profits in the last two years and used those profits to provide incredibly extravagant compensation packages to the CEO and other top officials at the company. The Moderna CEO even became a multibillionaire as a direct result of Moderna’s COVID vaccine, and several Moderna chairmen, co-founders, and investors are now COVID billionaires, too.⁵

Let’s be clear: The purpose of the recent taxpayer investment in Moderna was to protect our health and lives, not to turn a handful of corporate executives and investors into multibillionaires.

This is why we are urgently calling for Moderna to NOT gouge users of the life-saving, people-funded COVID-19 vaccine! Click here to add your name to my petition, then send it to 3 loved ones to spread the word.

In solidarity,

Senator Bernie Sanders

Sources:

1. "Big Pharma Greed’s (sic) Knows No Bounds," The Nation, January 20, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/170338?t=13&akid=345038%2E40999114%2EE_hLl-

2. Ibid.

3. "'Outrageous': Bernie Sanders calls out Moderna for proposed Covid vaccine price hike," CNN, accessed January 25, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/170341?t=15&akid=345038%2E40999114%2EE_hLl-

4. "Moderna May Raise Covid-19 Vaccine Price Up To $130, Bernie Sanders Calls It ‘Outrageous,'" Forbes, January 18, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/170342?t=17&akid=345038%2E40999114%2EE_hLl-

5. "Sanders calls Moderna plan to raise price of COVID vaccine 'unacceptable corporate greed'," VermontBiz, January 10, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/170343?t=19&akid=345038%2E40999114%2EE_hLl-

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