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Modern Chief Executive Stephane Bancel on Wednesday defended the company’s plans to raise the price of its Covid-19 vaccines fivefold, fending off pressure at a Senate hearing to scrap the increase while defending his compensation.
Moderna plans to raise the list price of its vaccine by 400% to $130 when the vaccines are sold on the private market as early as this fall. The company charged the US government about $26 per dose.
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, pressed Bancel during the hearing to agree not to increase the price of the vaccine by that much.
“Quadruling the price is huge,” Sanders told Bancel. “I sincerely hope you reconsider this decision. It will cost the taxpayers of this country billions of dollars. Is this something you can do?”
President Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asks Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing titled Taxpayers paid billions for this: So why would Moderna consider quadrupling the price of a COVID vaccine ? in the Hart Building on Wednesday, March 22, 2023.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Bancel refused such a commitment. He told the committee that the covid vaccine market is changing significantly as the US government stops buying and distributing vaccines for the entire country.
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Moderna expects demand for the vaccine to drop by 90%, leaving the company on the hook for any lost doses, Bancel said. During the pandemic, the federal government picked up those costs.
“To protect people, we have to do more than we think is necessary. We will have to pay for it,” Bancel said.
Moderna has developed a vaccine partnership with the National Institutes of Health. The US government has spent $12 billion on research, development and acquisition of imagery.
The covid vaccine currently remains the only Moderna product on the market. The company has made $21 billion in profits since the clip first debuted in the US in December 2020.
Sanders accused Bancel of “profiteering” and “excessive CEO compensation” during his opening remarks. The senator later told Bancel that the public doesn’t understand why Moderna would quadruple the price of a vaccine when the company and its executives made so much money.
Bancel cashed out more than $390 million in stock options in 2022, according to financial disclosures. As of March 8, it held a 7.3 percent stake in Moderna, valued at $4.3 billion based on Tuesday’s closing stock price of $152.10 per share.
Moderna’s board approved a golden parachute for Bancel, who jumped to $926 million at the end of 2021, when the company’s share price rose. According to financial disclosures, the value of that package has declined significantly to about $472 million by the end of 2022 as the value of Moderna’s stock has fallen.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, came to Moderna’s defense. Romney said Bancel became a billionaire because the shares he owns are now valuable because of the success of the company’s technology. Romney said people who invest large sums of money in risky, unproven drugs and treatments need a substantial return.
“I don’t know how much money is the right amount of money,” Romney said. “But the idea that corporate greed was just invented in America is absurd. It’s been there since the dawn of free enterprise—individuals investing in the hope that if they succeed, they’ll do very well financially.”
Bancel said the U.S. vaccination program has provided $5 trillion in economic value and prevented 18 million hospitalizations and 3 million deaths.
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