Sunday, February 6, 2022

Is Big Pharma greed suppressing demand for Covid pills?

 


The 2/5/2022 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article (top headline) barely hints at this possibility.

Linde said she would like to have the antiviral pills available in all Hometown Pharmacy locations across the state, but that there is little incentive to do so when demand is so low and pharmacies are losing money dispensing them. She said the reimbursement rate to pharmacies for dispensing the pills is generally less than $1, sometimes not enough to cover the cost of the label.

10/5/2021 The Intercept article provides the numbers:

A FIVE-DAY COURSE of molnupiravir, the new medicine being hailed as a “huge advance” in the treatment of Covid-19, costs $17.74 to produce, according to a report issued last week by drug pricing experts at the Harvard School of Public Health and King’s College Hospital in London. Merck is charging the U.S. government $712 for the same amount of medicine, or 40 times the price.

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