>> The COVID pandemic is very much still here.
While the case counts, the number of people in hospitals,
number of people have died have gone down over the past few months.
It is effectively leveled off at this point and is likely to rise in the near
future which means that if you have not gotten your vaccine, if you have not
gotten the most recent bivalent booster, now would be a great time to do it.
Not only for your own safety, but also for your bank account.
Because Pfizer has announced that it's soon going to be doing
a markup on the vaccine.
For uninsured Americans, it's going to rise by about 10,000%.
Let's give you all the information.
So once the US government uses up the doses it's already bought which we've been
burning through,
that's expected to happen sometime in the first few months of next year.
Pfizer's gonna raise the price to as much as $130 for a single dose of the vaccine.
So apparently, Angela Lukin,
executive t Pfizer said that they expect that the vaccine will be made available at
no cost to people who have private insurance or government paid insurance.
Lukin did not say whether the company will make any accommodations for
the tens of millions of people in the US without any health insurance.
I'm gonna say we can probably guess, I think maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, the cost of producing the vaccine is estimated to
be as low as $1.18 per dose.
The US currently pays around $30 per dose for Pfizer's shot.
So they were already making a tidy profit and
they're about to raise the price substantially.
>> Remember Martin Shkreli?
>> Yes.
>> You know how much he hiked the price of his seven times or something?
5,000%.
>> Geez.
>> And remember, everyone said that Martin Shkreli was the most evil
person in the world for raising the price 5,000%.
This raises 10,000%.
Now by my reading of it, we covered this in Unbossed earlier this week.
Everyone watch Unbossed every weekday at 1 PM Pacific,
4 PM Eastern, youtube.com and facebook.com/unbossedtyt.
It seems like it's a $10,000 above cost asking price.
10,000% above about how much it costs.
So you're making a 10,000% profit.
And so we went through and we're like imagine if other companies priced
their products the way Pfizer is pricing.
So at the launch of the dollar menu, McDonald's was charging $1 for
something that they made a 4% profit on.
And so yeah, a 6% profit on.
And so that is the equivalent of when they launched the dollar menu,
McDonald's had the $94 menu.
Charging this much based on what it cost them is like McDonald's charging you $94
for a double cheeseburger.
And when their executive shows up and
that executive says, you know what it's gonna be?
It won't cost you anything if you have private insurance.
Yeah, but they're still getting paid for private insurance.
>> Yeah.
>> It's all a scam.
Your your job is paying someone that much.
And because of that dynamic, it costs America.
Americans pay twice as much per person for healthcare.
So twice as much as every other industrialized nation that
has universal state run healthcare, we pay twice as much for
everything per person and we die sooner.
And when you hear that this system is running at a place in a way where you can
raise the cost by the price by 10,000%, you think, well, something's broken.
But the people who built the system say,
it's working exactly the way we continually pay for it to work well.
>> At the very least, it is illegal for
any of our politicians to invest in Pfizer or anything you can invest in.
>> You're saying things that make sense to do, it shouldn't be legal.
That's crazy.
Listen- >> Because they determine what's gonna
happen.
>> But yeah, no, of course, look it's absolutely insane.
It's absolutely insane.
And when you see that they're gonna be able to do this,
the idea that there's gonna be any significant strike back
against gasoline companies doing some more price gouging.
Look they're not gonna do anything about that.
The gas companies, at least aren't gonna raise the price of gas by 10,000% but
there's there's seemingly no end.
There's seemingly no limit.
At the same time, by the way, the WTO has stopped the proposal to temporarily
waive the patents on these vaccines which would have helped generic versions of
these vaccines be made in countries throughout the world which, by the way,
have not had nearly the access to vaccines that we have.
As of right now, just 23.3% of people in low-income countries have received at
least one coronavirus vaccine dose and that's not because they unfortunately
trusted Tucker Carlson and decided to go without.
Many people would love to get it, but just can't right now.
Pfizer is doing everything it can internationally to stop that sort of
proposal from going through.
Now in the past, it has been the case sometimes where these companies will say,
well, sure, we are charging way more than it cost to make these medications, but
we had to develop the drugs in the first place.
In this case though, we paid for that too.
I understand not 100%, but
we massively subsidize the development of these vaccines.
So to then turn around after already making a massive profit and
decide that we need to up it by four or five times is insult to injury.
>> Right, so with the other ones, we said operation warp speed.
Here's a bunch of money, please make it, that's tax.
So taxpayers already paid for it, okay?
With Pfizer, all we did was buy a bunch ahead of time.
Whether if it works, we're gonna buy a lot from you.
And so they essentially did not the first one's free, but the first one super,
duper cheap.
And then when you realize that Pfizer is awesome, you wanna stay alive, don't you?
Then they jack up the price by 10,000% over cost.
It's nuts, man.
>> And bear in mind, as you said, if you have the insurance,
you're still like it ain't free.
Look at your check.
>> Right. >> You're paying into that.
>> Right, someone's paying me, that's the thing.
It's like you just won't have to deal with the paperwork is essentially what
they're saying.
>> You won't have to take your debit card out as CBS, maybe.
That's the only thing it's saving you.
>> And then the last thing for everybody to tell all their friends about how it
works in America versus other countries, can we do this?
America, we're number one at so many things including among developed nations,
the cost of prescription medication.
Insulin, there's an ALS medication
that's $140,000 per year to have.
It's ridiculous.
So many things are so far above price.
Because other countries, they allow the government to buy wholesale.
The other countries say, okay, I'm Japan, you wanna sell any drugs in Japan?
The government's gonna buy all the drugs for everyone.
So we're Costco in this as opposed to sending someone to a boutique store.
And worse, the only part of the government that is allowed to collectively bargain,
negotiate for drug prices is the VA, the veterans.
And recently, we wanted a bunch of Medicare to do the same,
but that got brought down to 20 medications by 2029.
20 drugs, Medicare only.
That is absolutely, positively insane.
>> And it's especially weird, because there are so
many right-wing populist politicians, they must not know about this or
that they surely would have stood up for their constituents and fixed it.
>> Trump is the only one kind of saying it.
>> Yeah, he was also president for a few years and
he has absolute control over his entire party.
One would think that if he really prioritize that,
he could probably get them to do something about it.
>> And just the last little bit when they made collectively bargaining for
Medicare illegal when they created Medicare part B.
So in 2003, they just made it illegal to collectively bargain.
And they said, well, we think it's a better shot if Blue Cross Blue Shield and
Aetna, they're all going and doing the negotiations themselves.
But anyone who's ever been to ballpark knows that if there's four places
to buy a hot dog and they all decide they're gonna jack up the prices,
you've got only so many people offer healthcare and
they all are in it together raising the prices on us.
How do I have proof of that?
It cost twice as much per person in America for healthcare and we die sooner.
That is how you win.
Every argument about whether this competition situation works
versus the government collectively bargaining on your behalf.
>> Good point.