Published: March 2020

Affordability should be paramount when the COVID-19 vaccine is released to the public

Consumer Action joined nearly 70 organizations in writing to President Trump, asking him to ensure that vaccines or treatments for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), developed and purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars, are reasonably priced and available to everyone. Americans will not accept President Trump allowing Big Pharma corporations to profit off a pandemic that continues to claim thousands of lives.

Taxpayers have driven coronavirus research and development – not pharma corporations. Congress has taken notice that we can’t let pharmaceutical companies price gouge and threaten the coronavirus response, but now the country needs President Trump to act. Advocates called on President Trump to commit to nonexclusive licensing of whatever vaccine is developed – so that it is available to any manufacturer that can produce a quality product – and insist all manufacturers commit to reasonable pricing. Granting exclusive deals to pharmaceutical corporations to charge as much as they want on publicly funded vaccines and treatments does not only threaten our response to the coronavirus disaster, it would also undermine public health around the world.

Lead Organization

Public Citizen

Other Organizations

1,000 Days | Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE) | Affordable Insulin Now | Alliance for a Just Society | Alliance for Retired Americans | American Federation of Teachers | American Medical Student Association (AMSA) | American Muslim Health Professionals (AMHP) | Americans for Democratic Action | Caring Across | Center for Popular Democracy | Coalition on Human Needs | Community Catalyst | Consumer Action | Doctors for America | END AIDS NOW | Families USA | Health Care for America Now (HCAN) | Health Care Voter | Health GAP (Global Access Project) | Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) | Justice in Aging | Knowledge Ecology International | Lower Drug Prices Now | MoveOn | National Association of Social Workers| NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice | Niskanen Center | Other98 | Oxfam America | People's Action | Service Employees International Union (SEIU) | Shriver Center on Poverty Law | Social Security Works | The Democracy Collaborative | The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights | Treatment Action Group | Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN) | Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) | Voices for Progress

More Information

Click here to read the coalition letter.

For more information, please visit Public Citizen.

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