Why the HPV Vaccine is so Expensive
Emily Saarman has an interesting piece in Discover Magazine on the cost of the HPV vaccine; some worry that at $360, the vaccine will be inaccessible to many. Saarman reports:
“Merck calculated the price based on the money the vaccine will save the entire health-care system—and the CDC approved the price, as it does with other vaccines. ‘We based the price on a number of factors, most importantly the value Gardasil brings to individuals and society,’ says Jennifer Allen, a spokesperson for Merck. ‘HPV-related diseases cost the U.S. health-care system about $5 billion every year, and we took that into consideration.’ Although Merck would not make sales projections, population data show that the vaccine would gross more than $11 billion if all women 11 to 26 in the United States were vaccinated per the CDC recommendation.”
Saarman indicates that Merck will sell the vaccine to some of the poorest nations at cost, but the company declined to estimate what that cost would be. The article also includes information on researchers working on an alternative vaccine they estimate could cost $1 per dose.
I looked for additional information on the CDC’s involvement in approving the price of the vaccine in the U.S., but did not turn up much detail. It makes sense that the CDC would have some negotiating room with regards to the price, given the federal Vaccines for Children the agency administers, through which the “CDC contracts with vaccine manufacturers to buy vaccines at reduced rates.,” but I had hoped for more specific documentation. A CDC page for healthcare providers reports cost-effectiveness findings for the vaccine, but no transcription of any discussion or debate on the HPV vaccine cost turned up in a cursory search. Clinicians and public health workers may have an understanding of the CDC’s role in vaccine prices, but I suspect most of the general public assumes it’s decided by the company alone. I may look for more info to satisfy my own desire to understand this process, which I am not overly familiar with; will update this post if I find anything.
Nothing new; pharma, like amy other industry, determines pricing based on what it can get. This is not likely to be related to cost.
CDC is not a regulatory agency. The other side is much to powerful for it to dictate to anyone how the pricing should work.
Doctor Dino – For other readers, are you able to clarify the extent of the CDC’s involvement in pricing of vaccines?
For clarification, I don’t think it’s a new thing that drug companies price based on what they can get, rather than cost. What did surprise me was that the CDC was involved in any way in saying, “Yes, that price seems reasonable.”
Wow, that’s pretty perverse. There exists technology that could dramatically lower the costs associated with HPV, but eh, Merck doesn’t feel like passing on the benefit. I know the term is melodramatic, but how different is this from “price gouging?”
Hopefully they can mandate this vaccine so that insurance companies will be forced to cover it. I don’t know why they don’t cover it right now.
Those that don’t want to take the vaccine still have the option of opting out of this type of mandate as they do with all other vaccines.
No harm, no fowl.