We already know that big pharmaceutical companies inflate their drug prices, but we tend to overlook the human costs to those practices. In developing countries, the high cost of pneumonia vaccines can be weighed against the lives of the children who need them.
In the US, those with the luxury of a higher standard of living and easy access to better healthcare scoff at vaccinations. However, the children of countries like the Central African Republic see the truth daily in the world around them unequivocally: vaccines save lives.
Pneumonia Is Completely Preventable
A child dies from pneumonia every 35 seconds, according to Doctors Without Borders. Would you deny a life-saving vaccine to a child to prevent this deadly disease? The answer from big pharma is an emphatic “yes” when it comes to pneumonia vaccines.
Drug companies deny vaccines by charging staggeringly high prices – so much so that in the last 15 years, the cost of the most effective pneumonia vaccine (pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, or PCV) is 68 times higher today than it was in 2001. For reference, the rate of inflation between 2001 and today was about 34%.
Pharma Companies Rationalize Price Gouging
Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are the two companies which currently distribute the PCV vaccination. To justify their high prices, they cite cynical reasons like GSK does here:
“Providers of the capital which enables investment in R&D expect a return on their investment.”
Profiteering Sacrifices Lives For Dollars
Can it really be possible that the PCV vaccine costs GSK 68 times more to produce today than it did in 2001? Presumably, GSK and Pfizer were also paying for R&D (and the other overhead costs they claim) for the price they used in 2001, right?
It defies logic that a vaccine that’s already been on the market for 15 years costs more to “research” now, after it’s been developed, than it did in 2001.
Math – You’re Doing It Wrong
Ironically, it seems big pharma can’t even do investment math correctly. According to Gavi, an international pro-vaccination organization, vaccines actually do provide a return on investment. A Johns Hopkins University study showed that for every $1 invested in vaccines, there is a $6 return – with the overall economic gain over a lifetime exceeding $1.5 trillion.
So even by the measuring stick that big pharma companies choose, they’re practicing bad business.
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