Published on
Thursday, July 02, 2020
byCommon Dreams
'A Scandal': Contracts Show Trump Giving Big Pharma Free Rein to Price Gouge
Taxpayer-Funded Coronavirus Drugs
"The amount of money the government is throwing at companies is
unprecedented. Normally when you write bigger checks, you should have more
leverage, not less leverage."
byJake Johnson, staff writer
Bottles of a trial Covid-19 vaccine on a table in a lab in Brussels on June
18, 2020. (Photo: Vincent Kalut/Photonews via Getty Images)
Government contracts obtained by consumer advocacy group Knowledge Ecology
International show that the Trump administration is giving pharmaceutical
companies a green light to charge exorbitant prices for potential
coronavirus treatments developed with taxpayer money by refusing to exercise
federal authority to constrain costs.
"The government has limited its ability to intervene if the pharmaceutical
companies... charge unreasonable prices for the resulting Covid-19 vaccines
or treatments."
-Knowledge Ecology International
Through the Freedom of Information Act, Knowledge Ecology International
(KEI) last week got hold of a number of heavily redacted agreements between
the Trump administration and major pharmaceutical companies like Johnson &
Johnson, Regeneron, and Genentech.
Five of the seven documents reviewed by KEI are classified as "other
transaction agreements," which allow federal agencies to loosen regulations
designed to protect the public in order to help companies streamline the
product development process.
In the case of four contracts for potential Covid-19 treatments or vaccines
with Johnson & Johnson, Genentech, Regeneron, and Roche issued by the
Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the
Pentagon, the Trump administration omitted a standard condition requiring
that products developed with taxpayer money be made available to the public
"on reasonable terms."
"This means that the government has limited its ability to intervene if the
pharmaceutical companies (which are party to the agreements and are
receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to conduct the research) charge
unreasonable prices for the resulting Covid-19 vaccines or treatments," KEI
noted in a press release.
KEI also found that federal contracts with Genentech and Regeneron for
coronavirus treatments contain passages restricting the government's ability
to "have generic manufacturers make and distribute through pharmacies and
other commercial outlets an effective diagnostic test, drug, or vaccine for
Covid-19."
much worse, the Trump administration is making them unaffordable by giving
out patent monopolies, otherwise they would be cheap generics
https://t.co/ZZc4dQ4jXj
- Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) July 2, 2020
The details of the contracts come just days after the Trump administration
faced backlash from consumer groups for refusing to require Gilead to charge
a reasonable price for its Covid-19 treatment remdesivir. On Monday, as
Common Dreams reported, Gilead announced it will charge U.S. hospitals
around $3,120 per privately insured patient for a treatment course of
remdesivir, which was developed with the help of at least $70.5 million in
taxpayer funding.
"Allowing Gilead to set the terms during a pandemic represents a colossal
failure of leadership by the Trump administration," Peter Maybarduk,
director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program, said in a
statement Monday. "The U.S. government has authority and a responsibility to
steward the technology it helped develop."
A scandal: BARDA & DOD have used contract law to WEAKEN the
already-too-weak, & weakly enforced, patent & other rights that the US
government holds over vaccines, drugs, & other COVID-19 technologies they
fund w/ our public dollars. More here from @KEI_DC: https://t.co/gwE03moA4a
https://t.co/jugtzr150w
- Chris Morten (@cmorten2) July 2, 2020
As the Washington Post reported Wednesday, "[Johnson & Johnson] has a $456
million contract with BARDA to develop a coronavirus vaccine and a $152
million contract to conduct screening of drug compounds that could be
Covid-19 treatments."
"Regeneron has contracts worth up to $130 million to develop two therapies
for the disease," the Post noted. "Roche's Genentech subsidiary has
contracts worth $47 million to develop a pair of therapies."
James Love, the director of KEI, told the Post that "the amount of money the
government is throwing at companies is unprecedented."
"Normally when you write bigger checks," Love said, "you should have more
leverage, not less leverage."
