The Hill: House Democrats ask Trump to ensure affordability of future coronavirus vaccine
“Dozens of House Democrats wrote to President Trump Thursday to ask that he ensure any future coronavirus vaccines and treatments be ‘accessible, available and affordable.’ The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will help fund efforts by Janssen — a drug company owned by Johnson & Johnson — to create a coronavirus vaccine and treatment. HHS is also partnering with French drugmaker Sanofi to produce a potential coronavirus vaccine…” (Hellmann, 2/20).

STAT: Lawmakers to Trump: Don’t give ‘monopolies’ to companies that develop coronavirus treatments with taxpayer funds
“…In a letter sent Thursday, 46 members of Congress urged the Department of Health and Human Service not to issue an exclusive license to any drug maker that develops a coronavirus treatment over concerns that ‘providing monopoly rights could result in an expensive medicine that is inaccessible, wasting public resources and putting public health at risk in the U.S. and around the globe.’ Instead, they urged the Trump administration to issue limited licenses requiring companies to make any treatment available at an affordable price, although the lawmakers did not offer an approach for how that might be established. They also insisted that HHS intervene if a drug maker prices a treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, at an ‘excessive’ price, which was not defined…” (Silverman, 2/20).