It’s weird to think about how covid changed so much and there’s this new, not quite back to normal situation, and we’re all just living with it. President Biden said it’s over, but people are still getting it and people still need shots for it. Around the end of this year, Pfizer’s government contract will end and they will begin charging $110-130 per dose. However, insurance will still allow most people to get vaccinated for free or cheaply. And Pfizer has an income-based assistance program for uninsured folks as well.
Pfizer is raising the “commercial list price” for its coronavirus vaccines.
The pharmaceutical company said Friday that the drug will cost between $110 to $130 per dose once its government contract ends, according to the Associated Press, though many will continue to receive the shot for free.
New prices could go into effect as soon as early 2023, depending on when the government phases out its own distribution program, the outlet said.
Angela Lukin, Pfizer’s global primary care & U.S. president, explained that increased prices are due to the costs of switching from multi-dose to single-dose vials and commercial distribution. Lukin added that the new prices are still below the level of “what would be considered a highly effective vaccine,” per the AP.
Since the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover the costs of most recommended vaccines without charging out-of-pocket, many will pay little to nothing. People with coverage through private insurance or public programs like Medicare and Medicaid will also likely pay nothing.
Pfizer also has an income-based assistance program to help uninsured people in the U.S. receive a vaccination.
The new estimated list price for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine is comparable to that of other adult vaccines, such as hepatitis and shingles, which can range from around $64 to $171, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Coronavirus vaccines and boosters are expected to remain free until the government ends its public health emergency declaration over the COVID-19 pandemic or depletes its federally acquired supply, according to a report published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).
It seems like covid is moving the way of the seasonal flu. The CDC is adding the covid vaccine to its recommended immunization schedule for 2023, saying “all adults and children 6 months and older should get the COVID vaccine and booster doses when eligible.” Of course people will continue to decline the vaccine, just as people decline flu shots and others. But hopefully its addition to the schedule alongside many other familiar shots will convince some of the holdouts who felt that the vaccine was developed too quickly, etc. I have plans to get my flu shot and booster at the same time next week. Luckily, I’ve somehow managed to — knock on wood — escape covid and I’d like to continue to do so for as long as possible. As least I know if I do get it, the vaccine and boosters will mitigate the worst of it.
Photos credit: CDC via Unsplash and Getty
I wonder what that means for other countries aside from the US. Also here in my country (in the EU) getting both the flu and covid shot isn’t an option at the moment – 4 weeks at least between the two is the rule, I do hope we can get the combo option next year
RLY? In Poland it is recommended to have both (flu& covid) shots at the same time
At the moment in the UK you can only get a booster if you’re over 50 or clinically vulnerable. I’m hoping that in future it will be treated more like the seasonal flu shot, free for priority groups but anyone else can have it if they pay. I’d happily pay for it at this point. My husband is over 50 and was allowed to have the Covid booster and flu shot at the same time.
I work at a very large major medical center in the US. We all (self included) got our booster and flu shot at the same time. I stood in line watching others and received my shots in the same arm. No problem. Tired for a day or two but thats it.
Personally I like to bundle things together: If I’m going to be tired or etc, bring it, I don’t want to drag it out. If you have bad news tell me all of it now, not one bad item per day.
In Portugal you have the combo option as well as just the flu shot… You’re choice. For instance I’m taking solely the flu, since I had covid 3 months ago,, Though I’m not taking a 4thn shot… Definately not….
I didn’t want to deal with two sore arms so I got Covid booster at the end of September and flu shot almost two weeks ago. No one in my neck of the woods wears a mask anymore except me. I put one on at every public appearance. Lol!
Seriously, people are much too blase. Even if the initial COVID infection is mild, long Covid is a real thing. And from what I hear, it can be very debilitating, even worse than the initial illness. Not taking chances.
Brassy Rebel, I continue to wear a mask, too. There are not a lot of people who are, but I don’t care I’m going to continue to use a mask. I’m starting to get much better at using the hand sanitizer again. I just discovered that only 5% of the US have had the most recent booster. Well, one of the strains that tends to do an end run around the vaccine/booster is now getting steam here in the US. If exposed, the booster will help from getting really sick, hospitalized and death. It won’t be pretty if people don’t get the new booster.
CB, I know you try to be positive about everything COVID. At the same time, we have to be mindful of saying things that aren’t true. COVID has a much higher fatality rate per infection than the flu. It is also more transmissible than the flu. Flu and cold are poor comparisons except for also being spread through our respiratory systems – we breathe them out, we breathe them in. Also, COVID is not a seasonal virus, though rates go up further when we go indoors, further testament to their contagion via shared air. COVID rates have been much higher in spring, summer and fall than for colds and flu. They’ll just go even higher in winter due to human mingling.
We need to continue wearing KN95 or N95 masks when inside with others not in our households, including in transit. We need to wear them outside in crowds. We need to open windows and doors, to use HEPA filters and Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, to turn on fans. These are the ways that we prevent infection. Vaccines are there to help us stay alive and healthy if we get infected, but it’s far superior to prevent infection. COVID does damage in some silent, stealthy ways that are only just starting to show up in our population — and that’s above and beyond the all-too-frequent disabling cases of Long COVID.
Having near-uncontrolled spread is fostering further mutations and the virus mutates toward getting past vaccines and any, limited, short-lasting protection from prior infection.
Please everyone: Pressure your government to keep paying for and fostering vaccination, masking and clean indoor air. And vote for governments that care about public health. We won’t have economic and political stability until we end this public-health emergency.
We can stay hopeful but we have to also be honest about our prospects in the current situation. Individual responsibility means being responsible toward others.
THANK-YOU, YES!!! from a nurse who’s heart is sore from an infected daughter visiting her mom without telling the facility. 5 deaths.
Thank you, for taking care of people and for sharing this dreadful story.
With all the talk about “personal responsibility,” it needs to be said that the responsibility part stands not so much for protecting your own hide as for being responsible toward others.
I read Kaiser a little differently – not that COVID is like the flu, but that public health policy is moving toward treating the COVID vaccine as an annual event, like the flu vaccine. But maybe that’s because I’ve been hearing this from our government officials.
Yes, I understand that’s one way of reading what Celebitchy wrote…she tends to cover the pandemic. But government officials are getting ahead of themselves in terms of disease management. And it’s poor communication because most people hear “It’s like the flu” and act accordingly, with poor vaccine uptake and no masks. And then we’re back where we started.
We may, if we get serious and smart today about COVID suppression, eventually reach that stage of calm management of endemic disease that spreads more in the winter. But that’s not where we are at today, and with no masks and ventilation, we run the daily risk of allowing a mutation to emerge that is both more transmissible AND more virulent. And then the disease s**t will really hit the fan.
How we’re managing COVID is like a deadly dress rehearsal for what’s to come. These non-stop pep talks while more than half the world remains unvaccinated and US, UK, Canadian, Australian, etc. health-care systems are already under great strain creates cognitive dissonance of the highest order. As happened during the 1918-1920ish pandemic, officials concern themselves with telling the public not to panic, instead of helping the public (which has not panicked, by the way) control the disease.
The more things change…
Oops, neither Kaiser nor CB wrote the story… but the excellent new writer, Peridot. Sorry for confusing the bylines!
Thank you for saying this. Covid is not like the flu. Last time I checked, the flu doesn’t have a cumulative risk of brain damage every time you get it.
Fabulous comment. Thank you!
Thank you 😷
What a sick irony it would be if US tax payers completely funded Pfizer’s development of shot only to be charged for them once again later.
That’s generally how it goes.
Yeah, that’s already happening. It is precisely why you should be mad about drug prices.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/us-tax-dollars-funded-every-new-pharmaceutical-in-the-last-decade
MicMack, I’m not sure where you read that, but it’s not true. Pfizer spent $1 billion dollars in collaboration with a small German company (husband and wife) to develop the vaccine. The only money Pfizer took from the US government was for distribution of the vaccine. Pfizer came out and stated this several times when it was misreported that the vaccine was taxpayer funded. It’s important not to spread disinformation.
@MICMACK the Pfizer vaccine was actually developed by Biontech in Mainz, Germany. It’s a firm owned by Turkish-German couple and it received its funding by the EU and Germany, not the United States.
They partnered with Pfizer as they didn’t have the means to mass produce the vaccine themselves (being more of a research outfit).
So the German biotech company owns the intellectual property for the vaccination? What is the law in EU for this kind of public health research finding funded by the government? Who will make money from selling the vaccinations? TIA.
Sophie & MsGnomer, what Pfizer reported at the very beginning was that they spent $1 billion dollars in collaboration with the German company to develop this vaccine. The husband and wife (German company) had already done a vast amount of research in the field, so partnering with Pfizer gave them the money to develop the vaccine.
This was reported many times by Pfizer when disinformation went out saying the US paid for the development. Pfizer got funding for distribution.
I suspect the patent is held by both Pfizer and the German Co, but I don’t have facts on that subject.
Nobody is going to get a booster going forward if it costs money. I am anxious about the coming winter.
Even if insurance covers all or most of it, not everyone has insurance, and not everyone can deal with the co-pay or the hassle of putting through the paperwork. They’d rather forget about it.
It’s cheaper for health insurers (private and public) when people die than when they get sick.
The life and disability insurance providers are the ones who will be running out of money. They’re the ones to watch.
It’s always possible that County Health Department will give shots for free or whatever amount you can afford to pay. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s wait to see what happens.
Glad I got my Pfizer bivalent booster back in September. I got my flu shot on a Friday and my Pfizer booster on a Monday. I am really glad I did not schedule both on the same day but I probably should have done them more like a week apart instead of 3 days. I always get a sore arm with the flu shot but this time around I had 2 days of side effects with the covid booster. I only ever had that awful 24 hours of side effects with my second Moderna shot (all my previous covid shots had been Moderna up until now) so I was surprised by the 48 hours of side effects. It was mostly a pounding headache, tiredness, and just general malaise and I slept horribly the night after I got the shot and felt nauseous all night (not the same day, the next day). I didn’t take any time off as I started a new permanent position only a few weeks before the shot. I advise everyone to get it on a Thursday/Friday just in case so you can have the weekend to recover, though most people I know just had a sore arm and nothing more. It might also be because I had covid twice earlier this year 6 weeks apart? No idea.
But yes, covid is still alive and well. My father (60+) got covid for the second time this year (he first had it in May which is how I first got it) after traveling to France after his father passed away. Most likely got it on the plane. He wore a mask the entire time he was around his family and stayed at a hotel, but he did not completely isolate or stay away from his father’s funeral (he ate at a separate table away from others/sat in a pew in the church off to the side etc). That might really make some people angry and I wasn’t thrilled about it either, but my father’s family did not tell him to stay away and I wasn’t going to argue against 30+ people. I was only in France 3 whole days, I maybe slept a total of 3 hours a night while I was there, the jet lag, the grief, the intense emotions… I didn’t have it in me to be father’s covid watchdog at the same time. It was already stressful enough traveling to France for my grandfather’s funeral. My mom, sister, and I wore masks constantly around him, made sure to open windows when we could, and even were in the same car as him several times. I sanitized/washed my hands religiously. None of us got it and none of his family got it (that or everyone was asymptomatic which I don’t think is possible). I also had gotten my booster two weeks prior to all this as did my sister so I was thankful for that at least. My dad has recovered and is fine now but it means he probably won’t get his booster until January as they recommend waiting 3 months after getting covid. I have a feeling a lot of people will be treating covid the same way my French family did when my dad got covid right before my grandfather’s funeral. I know it’s not what people want to hear… I’m just glad I didn’t get it a third time in one year.
Lately, the thing that makes me rage so hard is people with obvious symptoms of Covid (coughing, etc). going out and about in public and not even bothering to wear a mask. Like, WTF is wrong with you?!
Ya, The pandemic is “over” when the government decides they’re done paying for the shot. As usual it’s all about the money.
Also I’ve looked into getting financial assistance for the flu shot in the past and it’s pretty impossible so doubt many uninsured people will actually get help and probably won’t get it. I didn’t have insurance a few years ago and missed the local flu clinic which does them for free and tried to find somewhere that would give me a free shot and not charge $75 on it was next to impossible. Finally went to the county health place and they will give me one but according to their system they thought it looked like I had insurance which I knew I didn’t. Eventually I ended up getting some bill from him first like 75 or 80 bucks that I just threw away and ignored it until they gave up. So great to be a small business owner, Paying ridiculous amounts of taxes every month, I have no access our way to actually afford healthcare and can’t even get a damn flu shot from my government.
This kind of shit right here where they are obviously putting profits before people is why so many people don’t trust the government and it’s hard to take the government advice seriously when we’re experiencing a new virus like this. It’s so blatantly obvious what the priority is here.
Luna17, did you contact your County Health Department? You may be surprised that they can help.
I had COVID once, back in August, and it scared the crap out of me.
For reference: I’ve had pneumonia twice, badly enough the second time that I was hospitalized as an adult. The pneumonia sucked, but in a “I hate being sick, this is so miserable” normal sort of way, like a really bad flu.
Pneumonia felt like it was something unfortunate that happened to me — COVID felt like it was deliberately, actively crapping on me, like with malice. It was so much worse in ways I can’t quite explain. And yes, I’ve had my vaccine and first booster (can’t get the second yet).
I discovered last week that I might have some degree of long COVID — my lung capacity is complete garbage, and now I’m on a massive steroid twice a day just so I don’t need to use my inhaler to go up and down the stairs.
The idea of even fewer people getting the vaccine / booster feels like a nightmare waiting to happen.