Merck Selling Taxpayer Funded COVID Drug To Americans At 40 Times The Cost To Produce It

A new report by Sharon Lerner at The Intercept has revealed that a promising new COVID drug from Merck - one that was funded with $29 million in federal (taxpayer) money - is being sold back to the American public at 40 TIMES the cost to produce it. Drug companies are determined to squander any goodwill they may have earned by creating the COVID vaccines as they continue to screw over Americans in their neverending quest for profits. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

As we continue to muddle our way through this pandemic that has now claimed the lives of more than 700,000 Americans, more and more drug companies are coming out with what they think could be viable treatments for COVID. You know, and that's really great news. That's been one of the hardest parts about this is we really don't have any, you know, iron clad treatments for COVID-19. Yes, we got the vaccines in record time, but unvaccinated people who get the disease, there's not a whole heck of a lot we can do and that's why we have so much death from it. But there are new drugs out there and one of those new drugs from Merck is called, molnupiravir, molnupiravir. And it's a drug that only costs $17.74 to produce. And in the clinical trials that they have come out with so far things have looked really good.

They've reduced hospitalization rates. It's helping people get over COVID quicker. You know, $17.74, oh and by the way, this drug was actually created with federal money, $29 million from the federal government, from our paychecks, our paychecks made this drug and it looks like it's doing well. So how much is Merck charging the United States for this drug? Oh, I'm glad you asked because Merck is charging for a five day course of the drugs here in the United States, $712. $712 for a drug that costs $17.74 to produce that was created with $29 million of our money. And this is all according to a phenomenal new report, by the way, by Sharon Lerner in the Intercept. They are charging 40 times more than what it costs them to produce the drug that they really didn't even have to pay to develop. So it's not like they have to recoup a lot of R and D costs.

Like they always tell us, right? Oh, well the research and development into this was so great. We got to pay ourselves back. Otherwise, we go under and then you've got nothing. No, they used our money. That federal income tax you see coming out of your paychecks, that money you pay to the IRS every April, that's what was used to develop this drug that they're now selling back to us at 40 times the cost to produce. And I wish this were the only case of this. I wish we were talking about this because this was an anomaly among the pharmaceutical companies. But it's not, it's standard operating procedure at this point. We have certain drugs here in the United States with a markup, the markup is over 200000%. Pap and I have talked about that many times over the years on many different programs here at Ring of Fire.

But some drugs marked up 20000% or 200000%, excuse me, because they literally at this point cost pennies to produce a pill, but it's sold back to us at a couple hundred dollars a pill. And this mol, molnupiravir, however you pronounce it, is going to be no different. And it sucks because yeah, this could be a life-saving medication. This could be one of our tickets to finally end the pandemic. If we're finally able to not freak out when somebody has COVID because, oh, no, you got COVID okay, well, you need to go ahead and take this and you'd be good in about four or five days. Good for you. If we can get to that part, yeah, we can get back to our regular lives. All these anti maskers can stop flipping out because you may not have to wear a mask on a plane anymore.