Voters Support Capping the Cost of the Coronavirus Vaccine
By Ethan Winter
Coronavirus is now in the United States. There have now been 135 documented cases of the respiratory virus, according to The New York Times, in the United States across 16 states, with fears rising that we are heading towards a pandemic. Already we are seeing ways in which our count myriad ways that our current system could make the disease more deadly. As Stephanie Armour reported, “Lawmakers and federal officials, alarmed by the spread of the coronavirus, are moving to plug gaps in the U.S. health-care system that could worsen the epidemic by deterring people from getting tested, such as a lack of insurance and paid sick days, as well as the cost of medical care.”
Whether or not the price of a potential vaccine would be capped has become an issue of considerable political contestation. President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told Congress the vaccine may not be affordable to all Americans and that the administration would not move to cap costs. Democrats, meanwhile, struck a different note. In response to Azar’s comments, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made a commitment that the vaccine would be affordable for all Americans. She said, "This would be a vaccine that is developed with taxpayer dollars," Pelosi said. "We think that should be available to everyone, not dependent on Big Pharma. I guess yesterday when the secretary made that ill-advised statement, he was wearing his pharma hat, which he wore before he came here.” Candidate for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination Senator Bernie Sanders echoed this sentiment on Twitter.
As part of a February survey, Data for Progress asked registered voters about capping the cost of a coronavirus vaccine. Specifically, they were asked,
In recent testimony, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said he would not allow the government to cap the price of a coronavirus vaccine. Azar argues that price controls would keep the private sector from investing in a possible vaccine, discouraging innovation, and ultimately delay the production of lifesaving medicine. Others argue that a price cap is necessary to keep the vaccine affordable and that if people can't afford the vaccine they end up putting other Americans at risk, accelerating the pandemic. Do you support or oppose government action to cap the price of a coronavirus vaccine?
We found that by a 34 point margin, voters support placing a cap on any price-tag of the coronavirus vaccine to ensure that it is affordable to all Americans (56 percent support, 22 percent oppose). Women and men support price caps at similar rates. Voters under 45 support capping prices by a 44 point margin (61 percent support, 17 percent oppose), a rate slightly higher than those over 45, who back the measure by a 28 point measure (53 percent support, 25 percent oppose). Similarly, voters with college degrees support capping prices at a rate modestly higher than voters without college degrees do.
Support is largely consistent when broken down along racial lines. Asian voters support capping the cost of a vaccine at the highest rate at 49 points (64 percent support, 14 percent oppose). Among black voters, while rests at 47 percent, this largely attributable to a larger reported share of “Don’t know.”
Support for capping the price of a future vaccine to the coronavirus is robust among registered voters across a host of demographic breakouts. Democrats in Congress shouldn’t flinch in opposing a Trump administration policy that would leave the price of a vaccine up to the whims of the market and possibly out of reach of many Americans.
Ethan Winter @EthanBWinter is a senior advisor to Data for Progress.
For rounding purposes, all results conveyed in the charts sum to 100 percentage points and thus may deviate slightly from crosstab data.