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    Michael Hiltzik: Moderna and Pfizer are jacking up the price of COVID vaccines. The government should stop them

    by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times Jan 24, 2023 6 minutes
    Syringes filled with half doses of the Moderna vaccine for booster shots against COVID-19 lie in yellow-marked trays during inoculations at a vaccination center run by the Arbeiter Samariter Bund charity at the Ring-Center shopping mall during the fourth wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic on Nov. 29, 2021, in Berlin, Germany.

    Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of drug company Moderna, could barely restrain his pride in issuing his annual letter to shareholders on Jan. 3.

    "Since the beginning, it has been our mission to deliver on the promise of mRNA technology for patients," Bancel wrote, referring to the vaccines in the company's product pipeline that use short pieces of genetic code to help cells build immunity.

    "And we delivered at speed with our mRNA vaccine against COVID-19," he continued. "As our first approved product, it has impacted hundreds of millions of lives around the world. ... We are harnessing the power of mRNA to create a new category of medicines and a company that maximizes its impact on human health."

    A couple of pertinent points were missing from Bancel's 2,700 words of self-congratulation. One was the contribution of the federal government to the company's success.

    That included a research grant of almost $1 billion from the government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, through 2020, plus

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