‘Terrible Idea’: Biden Preparing to Shift Costs of Covid Treatments, Vaccines to Patients

Advocates for a more just healthcare system responded with alarm to Thursday reporting that the Biden administration is taking steps to stop paying for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments in the coming months, a move critics fear will lead to higher prices and more expensive coverage, enriching pharmaceutical and insurance giants at the expense of patients.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to meet with representatives from drug manufacturers, pharmacies, and state health departments on August 30 to “map out” how to shift the bill for coronavirus jabs and therapeutics from the federal government to individuals, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The looming transition that many have anticipated and resisted since the onset of the ongoing pandemic is expected to take months.

“We’ve known at some point we’d need to move over into the commercial market, and we’re approaching that time now,” said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary at HHS for preparedness and response. “We don’t want to do it by fiat.”

Progressives, however, argue that no change of the sort should happen regardless of how much planning goes into it.

Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and a pulmonary and intensive care unit doctor, called the proposal to commercialize the procurement and provision of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments a “terrible idea.”

“We must push back,” Gaffney, the past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, wrote on social media. “Free provision of vaccinations, Paxlovid, and monoclonals has been critically important—even if disparities persisted.”

Tahir Amin, an intellectual property lawyer and co-executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), described the Biden administration’s plan as a “recipe for disaster, unless you are a pharmaceutical company or other profit center in the healthcare market.”

Transferring the acquisition of Covid-19 shots and therapeutics, which also owe their existence to years of taxpayer-funded research, to the commercial market portends billions of dollars in additional profits for Big Pharma.

While the Biden administration’s plan could be a bonanza for Big Pharma, it throws into question how the nation’s millions of uninsured and underinsured people will access Covid-19 jabs and treatments once the federal government stops making them available at no cost.

Funding for the pandemic response is dwindling rapidly. Although the White House in February requested $30 billion from Congress to fight the public health emergency at home and abroad, opposition from Republicans has prevented a significantly smaller package from moving forward.

A recent analysis found that a single-payer healthcare system such as Medicare for All could have prevented more than 338,000 Covid-19 deaths nationwide.

Originally published at Commondreams.org.