this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Pfizer says it will price Covid treatment Paxlovid at nearly $1,400 for a five-day course, which researchers estimate only costs Pfizer $13 to produce. That's a 10,000%+ markup. Shameful. (mastodon.world)
submitted 2 years ago by i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[โ€“] frezik@midwest.social 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm always curious about the actual numbers. Here's their R&D budget by year:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/267810/expenditure-on-research-and-development-at-pfizer-since-2006/

And their overall revenue:

https://www.pfizer.com/sites/default/files/investors/financial_reports/annual_reports/2022/performance/

In 2020, their revenue was about $40B on $8.5B in R&D cost. They had a huge revenue increase the last few years, with 2022 being $100B, but R&D only increased to about $11B.

So they do have R&D, but it's not that big compared to the money they're bringing in. Their net income has increased substantially, as well.

[โ€“] AEsheron@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

In addition to that, I've heard that a large portion of that R&D spending is on iterating drugs they already own so that when the patent runs out they can patent a new version and lobby the old one to be made obsolete so generics can't be made.