Moderna

Public Risk, Private Profit

You funded the research. Then you paid for the shot. Here's what happened in between.

Canada regulates drug prices. The United States mostly doesn't. That single difference explains a lot about why Americans pay more for medications than anyone else in the developed world — and why the people making those drugs are doing extraordinarily well financially.

The Moderna situation is a useful example of how this plays out.

The Deal That Didn't Go Both Ways

When COVID-19 arrived, the federal government provided Moderna with significant funding to develop the mRNA vaccine. The money came from taxpayers. The risk was public.

If the vaccine had failed — if the research had gone nowhere — the public sector would have absorbed that loss. Moderna's downside was protected.

The vaccine worked. And Moderna posted a roughly 40 percent profit margin, funded in significant part by the investment the American public had already made in their research.

What did taxpayers receive in exchange for taking on that risk? No ownership stake. No return on investment. No requirement that the underlying technology be made available to other manufacturers — including those in developing countries who, given access to the mRNA platform, could have produced the vaccine themselves.

The technology was protected as Moderna's intellectual property. The public took the risk. The private company kept the reward.

The Booster Question

When the same company driving extraordinary profits from a publicly-funded vaccine also happens to benefit financially from repeated booster recommendations, it's reasonable to ask questions. Not conspiracy — just basic conflict-of-interest awareness that should accompany any evaluation of medical guidance.

Dr. Murphy's perspective: when the financial incentives of a private company are so directly aligned with a specific public health recommendation, the recommendation deserves more scrutiny than it typically receives.

The Pattern Is Bigger Than One Vaccine

The Moderna situation isn't unique. It's an example of a pattern: federal healthcare dollars flowing to private pharmaceutical companies under arrangements that privatize the upside while socializing the risk.

Taxpayers fund the research. Companies own the results. Americans then pay market rates — often among the highest in the world — for medications their taxes helped develop.

Other countries negotiate drug prices. Canada does it. Most of Europe does it. The United States largely doesn't, and pharmaceutical lobbying is a significant reason why. The industry's presence in Washington is among the most well-funded of any sector.

What This Has to Do With Weight Loss

Directly? Not much. But it's the same system. The same incentive structures that result in insurance companies refusing to cover weight loss visits also result in publicly-funded vaccines generating private profit. The healthcare system in this country is optimized for revenue generation, not health outcomes.

Understanding that is part of understanding why the straightforward solutions — prevent obesity, reduce medication dependency, improve long-term health — don't get implemented. They're bad for business.

The answer, as frustrating as it is, is that you can't wait for the system to work in your favor. You have to make decisions that work for you regardless of what the system does or doesn't support.

That's what we help people do.

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