my dad is refusing to take vaccines because he thinks taking it will automatically make him vote dem because of nano-machine in them.

he also thinks vaccines are kind of HRT.

anyways how's your day?

While I'm sure there is a crazy markup, it's important to note the cost to produce - as in manufacture - does not include the cost of drug discovery, which is extremely expensive and involves a good amount of risk over a long period of time.

You can't just compare the cost of discovering a new drug vs. cost of producing a generic without any research like that.

They have broken the social contract. It's time to get the largest forks we can find with the largest torches we can.

Eat. The. Rich.

Intellectual property is a scam. A commonly heard defense of intellectual property is that it is needed for companies to fund their R&D. However pharmaceutical companies typically spent a lot more money on marketing & sales than they do on R&D. Big Pharma spending money on marketing and sales is harmful to our health. Apparently it's a lot more lucrative to get people drugged up on painkillers or whatever than to discover new medicine. If we didn't have intellectual property then we would have competition resulting in the lowest possible medicine prices. Companies would have no money for marketing so medicine would be judged on their actual properties, only the best would be given to patients, not the best marketed, but best health-wise. Companies would have no money for R&D either, but the government could fund R&D We shouldn't blame the players, we created a system that produces these bad actors. Let's change the system so that these bad actors couldn't exist. Intellectual property is a international problem, join the pirate party of your country and let's make it happen!

The eu:

€20 take it or leave it

From the bottom of my heart, fuck you Pfizer. I have had Covid twice, had my blood oxygen drop as low as 79, and I would still rather die a miserable covid death than suffer the injustice of being greed raped by the absolute worst caricature of capitalist pigs that actually came to life. I hope that money makes your board members miserable and can't do much to treat the uncurable, flesh eating disease your evil pig carcasses should be justifiably riddled with by karma, leaving your kids to donate your disgustingly afforded estate to charity to cleanse themselves of the nasty aftertaste of human suffering, the faint stink of people who are trying to take paxlovid and recover from a major virus in the rain and vulnerable cold because they can't afford both rent and medicine, after your death. Burn in hell, you uncaring scum.

EDIT: I realize this is a lot of vitrol to throw out into the universe, but they likely won’t ever see this on Lemmy, and to make matters worse they clearly won’t care anyway. It's just my own version of catharsis, I guess

Didn’t the government fund the development? So.. it’s not like they need so much to recover R&D right?

Paxlovid kept me alive when I had COVID. This makes me really upset. People will actually die without this.

So many Martin Shkrelis out there pricing drugs to the highest level they can get away with. Every big pharmaceutical company does this kind of thing, especially with new drugs.

It's been too long since the aristocrats were reminded that they need us more than we need them and that they can't hire enough of us to stop the rest of us once we take an idea to mind.

The amount of Pfizer boot lickers here is astounding

Thanks capitalism!!

/sarcasm.

Seriously, people are acting like this is new. There is no sense in shaming them we've had it brought to the mainstream by people like Martin Skhreli and nothing has been done. Martin Skhreli himself is only in jail because of his ponzi schemes, a.k.a. screwing other rich people out of their money.

I was given (free) Paxlovid when I finally contracted covid this year. We need laws regulating price increases. If you can't demonstrate that your costs for a product or service went up, you can't increase by more than x%. I don't know how you do this without encouraging higher introductory prices because it's not a problem that I've thought about in depth, but something like this needs to happen with further consideration.

Another thing I'd like to see is robber barons getting prosecuted for crimes against humanity, but that's not realistic.

13$ to produce including all the R&D behind it?

I'm not a fan of big pharma, quite the contrary, but I'd be curious to know where this number comes from...

Don’t ever think for a second that pharmaceutical companies did anything during Covid for our benefit. They were working their actuarial tables to figure out how they maximize their profits in the future against sick people dying.

And who is in charge of making sure this kind of immoral illegal thing doesn't happen? People who are still somehow allowed to collect kickbacks in exchange for looking the other way.

Ok who let Martin shkreli out of jail?

Explain why we make it legal for companies to set their own prices again

That's called freedom! Go to Russia if you don't like it! /s

It is shockingly easy to burn things.

I'm just going to leave that thought there.

Isn't it just this expensive because the government can't negotiate prices? So the insurances will pay a normal price but when the government is paying it'll cost more

I’m allergic to Paxlovid; taking it makes my neck and head swell up to where I look like Rocky Balboa after a fight and my neck feels like a giant tree trunk.

This isn’t important, but it’s probably the first time I’ve seen an article about Paxlovid since that happened, so it’s all I could think about for a minute.

I guess I’m not surprised that this is happening with one of the few very essential drugs that isn’t in the list of medications that congress is negotiating prices down on for medicare.

Of course pharmaceutical giants use any opening, opportunity, or loophole to exploit those who are sick. Disgusting.

They can treat deez nuts

This is the nature of providers vs insurers in the negotiation war. And those without insurance are the losers of this war.

Isn't Pfizer going to offer Paxlovid free of charge till 2028 if your uninsured or underinsured?

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-amends-us-government-paxlovid-supply-agreement-and

Who would be the people affected by this?

Pfizers R&D budget is 11 billion per year. That money comes from products from the market.

The left and right both hate Big Pharma, especially over the pandemic response.

Regulate the fuck out of the drug companies or nationalize them. Idc which, but operating unbridled is clearly a failure. Unregulated capitalism will kill us.

This is very off topic but I like that mastodon is now a platform more commonly being used to share information like this. Although for their mobile UI, I really hope they get rid of the bar on the right, it's very odd.

Unless the Pfizer ceo is beheaded, then get used to it.

For muh profit$.

Give it a couple of days, the Pfizer CEO will be telling everyone how desperately important it is that they get vaccinated.

Because he needs more money, obviously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bourla

Lmao what a deal!

ahh now it makes more sense why governments let it turn into an endemic virus

Pfizer conducts research in various areas, including MS therapy. That costs a lot of money.

But I can't complain anyway, here in Germany you can get Paxlovid free of charge because it's prescribed by a doctor.

But isnt this just kind of a negotiation price? In reality insurance companies will negotiate and make deals with lower prices, and people will still be covered for the same insurance cost, right?

Disclaimer: Not from US and I dont understand much about your insurance based health care system.

Trust the science folks. There's no reason why thes multinational pharma companies would do anything to hurt consumers.

Just don't take the damn Vax. We now know that people who never got vaxed have better immunity than those who did. Studies prove it

So no point getting this crap just to make Pfizer rich

$1400 is ridiculous but this post is ridiculous too. Hey OP, I want a vaccine to cure cancer. It’ll cost $13 to produce. Make it for me, test it, go through the approval process and I’ll sell it for $30. P.S. If I get sued, that’s on you too.

On the other hand the vaccine was free. What's their target market, the antivaxers?

I've been saying for years that universal healthcare won't solve the issue, unless we can get costs under control. If they can regulate medical related industries, such as pharma, the need for universal healthcare can be reduced or eliminated. As an added bonus, it would help keep the cost (ie. taxes) for universal healthcare a lot lower. This is pretty common for pharma companies to make insane profits like this, and it's extremely unethical.

Before I bought Pfizer stock, this type of news would upset me.

I think the COVID treatments probably create more problems health wise than the disease. At least for younger healthier individuals. After getting the first two immunizations my wife developed pots which she didn't have before.

Edit: It's interesting that people are down voting me for my personal experience with the vaccine. I don't fault them because we are all different and experienced the vaccine differently but since there was little to no clinical testing and the people who received the vaccine were the test subjects I don't understand why people would be so defensive about it. I also understand if people don't believe me and that's ok too.