Paying Twice for COVID-19 Drug
July 23, 2020
The company looking to market the drug remdesivir, which has shown some, if limited, promise in treating COVID-19, reportedly will charge over $3,000 for a course of treatment for people with private insurance, even though the US government spent $99 million on its development. Critics say this pricing isn’t fair. In Issues, an economist traced how the nation arrived at its current system for translating taxpayer-funded science into commercial drugs and offered ideas on how it might be reconfigured to reduce public costs while not unduly affecting industry.