New report details how America’s neoliberal vaccine production model is to blame for production obstacles to COVID-19 vaccines, skyrocketing prices, and return of curable diseases

WASHINGTON – Open Markets Institute today released a report titled, “Corporate Monopoly and the Decline of America’s Vaccine Industry,” laying out what the Biden administration should do to repair the U.S. vaccine system and defeat the next pandemic.

The report shows that, in light of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever to reverse decades of regressive corporate consolidation, deregulation, and government underinvestment in the vaccine industry.

Read the full report here.

In response to the report release, Phil Longman, policy director at Open Markets Institute, issued the following statement,

“Scientists have been racing to develop vaccines for COVID-19, but even an effective vaccine will not end the crisis in vaccine development and production. America’s highly monopolized vaccine industry is set up to make profits, not protect public health. And now we’re experiencing the effects in real time, as we will wait a long time to receive doses of vaccines for the current pandemic.

“Since Reagan handed federal biomedical research and key regulatory agencies over to profit-maximizing corporations, monopolists have been sacrificing crucial vaccine production and distribution systems in order to line their pockets.

“There’s a whole toolkit of solutions for our vaccine production disaster that the federal government should utilize. We can reinvest in key regulatory agencies, strengthen antitrust enforcement, overhaul intellectual property law, and even build a government-owned production system. It’s time to dismantle the neoliberal policy regime and unwind the ongoing financialization of the economy. COVID-19 has proven that.”

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