Senators press Moderna CEO on COVID-19 vaccine price hike

Moderna’s CEO on Wednesday defended a plan to more than quadruple the company’s COVID-19 vaccine price, but he also said the drugmaker will work to ensure patients continue paying nothing at drugstores or clinics.

Stephane Bancel told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the drugmaker will charge a list price of around $130 per dose for the vaccine in the U.S.

That price is expected to go into effect later this year. Until now, the federal government had been Moderna’s lone U.S. customer, buying doses in bulk to make sure that people weren’t charged anything.

The government paid around $15 per dose in 2020 and more than $26 last summer for Moderna’s bivalent booster, according to an analysis by the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation.