Drug Industry Will Make Billions With a COVID-19 Vaccine

Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Given that the most important aspects of our society are hidden from us, it’s hard to say exactly how much the Covid-19 vaccine will cost us when they eventually get one. What we do know, or anyone with a functioning brain would know, is that no matter what the spokespersons for the pharmaceutical companies say, there will be some hand wringing among the investors, speculators and social parasites that park their capital in this industry.

Some of the big companies involved in the sickness industrial complex, the drug side of it anyway, have “pledged” to the members of the US Congress, themselves mostly millionaires and investors, that they won’t “seek a profit from the shots” (WSJ 7-22-20). Some of the drug producing outfits have said that they will sell the shots at cost of production.  What that cost of production is of course, we will never know as that is not public information and if it was, we would be foolish to take it at face value. Others have stated that they will set their prices above their cost of production.

Pfizer, one of the biggest drug companies says it intends to make a profit but “wouldn’t charge too much” according to the Wall Street Journal. Albert Bourla the Pfizer CEO was paid $17.9 million in 2019 an 82% pay rise over the previous year and $3.63 million of that was his “annual incentive awards”. Does anyone actually believe that these people and the corporations that comprise a large sector of the sickness industrial complex has the health of the public at heart? Pfizer and its partner, BioN-Tech SE says the price they charge for the vaccine will reflect the “extraordinary times” referring to the coronavirus pandemic.

“…analysists say drug makers could earn billions of dollars.”, once a vaccine gets to market according to the Wall Street Journal, and this is the reality we face with a health system controlled by a few major private companies and the coupon clippers that own them. If we were to calculate the money that has been made by a few individuals off the backs of the health care industry over decades the figure would be staggering. Many drug companies are in public/private partnerships with public universities which has been the case for a long time as so many crucial social needs are developed through the public sector then the private sector reaps the benefits.

The global response to the pandemic speaks volumes about the failure of capitalism and the market in such situations. Thousands of people die because they can’t afford life-saving medications. Here in the US, people cross in to Mexico and in the north to Canada to get drugs that are unaffordable in the US. Company execs talk of finding that “blockbuster drug” that will bring in great returns once it gets on the market, like a pair of $200 basketball shoes. There has been some effort among EU countries to work more closely with regard to this issue but in general, these companies and different nations will be competing with each other in order to capitalize on a potential profits windfall that a vaccine will bring and those that need it the most will suffer the most.

The US health system is totally market dominated and the country spends some $4 trillion a year on health care, a system that consumes about 18% of GDP. The US population pays the most for medical care and gets the least for it.

We are in extraordinary times but also in a period where opportunity knocks once again. I attended a Zoom meeting last week at which two socialist candidates for the National Executive of the UK Labor Party spoke. They both pointed out how the vast majority of the British public want the major utilities re-nationalized. They want the National Health Service to remain public and to receive more public investment and control.

In the US, we lack an independent working class political party, based on workers organizations like the unions and working class organizations in the communities in which we live and work; renters rights, housing rights, environmental rights organizations and other working class organizations confronting this offensive of capital. This is a major problem as the most powerful capitalist party in the world, the US Democratic Party, will never nationalize the major industries that control such crucial aspects of our lives. 

The heads of organized labor, some who met with the degenerate Trump for a photo op at the Oval Office, have the potential to provide this alternative but as unidentifiable security forces, sent by Trump, invade our cities, the labor hierarchy, as it usually does, pretty much remains silent----the dogs that don’t bark.  I joke when I say they are still at Club Med but are they?

We are in a period during which the domination of the two capitalist parties that have governed US society for over a century is ending. It is a volatile period where we will likely see a left split at some point for the Democrats and either the death knell for the Republicans or perhaps even a right wing semi-fascist part emerging from this crisis ridden party. It’s hard to say exactly except that we are passing through a new phase.

It is important to demand what we need, not what the political representatives of capital and their allies atop organized labor deem acceptable. The health industry, from the hospital care, nursing home care (what barbarism it is that the care of old and sick people should be a profit making entity) to the drug industry, all aspects of public health should be publicly owned and democratically controlled by those who use it and those who work in it from the scientists to the doctors, nurses, technicians and orderlies on the ground floor.

Finance capital banking, transportation, education all the crucial social needs dominated by private corporations and the few thousand investors that get rich of them should be taken under public ownership. We have to rid ourselves of the dictatorship of capital if humanity is to survive and flourish. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.