Novavax’s executives are just the latest Big Pharma players to follow the same pandemic profiteering playbook: drive market speculation with PR announcements, watch stock prices skyrocket, then pocket hundreds of millions of dollars when they think no one’s looking.
Americans deserve a clean break from the Trump administration’s botched COVID response that has cost us 350,000 lives to date and bungled everything from testing to the vaccine rollout. Rather than inviting Moncef Slaoui, who has long been a controversial leader at Operation Warp Speed because of ethics conflicts, the Biden administration should stop the revolving door of Big Pharma cronies who undermine public confidence in government agencies and put Pharma profits ahead of public health.
Voters in Georgia turned out in record numbers yesterday in two races where health care and democracy were central themes. Yesterday, voters sent a loud and clear message: we need elected leaders that will ensure everyone has access to the healthcare and affordable medicines we need, especially during a pandemic that on that same day killed a record number of people.
It’s disappointing — but hardly surprising — that even in the middle of a global pandemic, drug corporations have continued to hike the prices of drugs people depend on for their health and–sometimes–even their survival. While Americans started 2021 facing the worst health and economic crisis in modern history, drug corporations rang in the New Year by raising their prices on more than 300 drugs.
Today David and Kathe Sackler will try to shift blame away from their family corporation, Purdue Pharma, despite overwhelming evidence that the corporation’s exploitative marketing fueled a man-made epidemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people while making them huge profits. But Americans from all walks of life and in every corner of the nation who have suffered the consequences of opioid addiction know all too well the role that drug corporations like Purdue have played in destroying millions of lives.
When we say that personnel is policy, this is precisely what we mean. Confirmation of President-elect Biden’s nominee, Xavier Becerra, would be a significant step toward putting affordable healthcare and prescription drugs within reach for all. Becerra has a wealth of experience in promoting affordable healthcare, including his work to strengthen the Affordable Care Act while in Congress, defending the law against legal attacks from the Trump Administration, and holding pharmaceutical corporations accountable for price gouging while Attorney General in California.
The Centers for Disease Control’s commitment to make distribution of the COVID vaccine fair, equitable, and transparent is encouraging. We know that this pandemic has disproportionately impacted Black, Latino and Native American communities across the country, and the federal government must ensure that those most affected by the health and economic devastation caused by this virus have affordable access to vaccines and treatments.
