It should be free of charge? There is no free lunch. Someone will have to pay for it. If you feel the government should pay the company, so be it, but be aware that it's not free in this case; it's the taxpayers paying for it.
If we were to impose that a company that invests literally billions in R&D must deliver their product free of charge, then there will be no more R&D and no more new medications, period.
Sure, that's an argument for universal healthcare / single payer and I'm for it. But while we don't have it, someone will need to pay for remdesivir. The company did donate 140,000 doses to the government but at some point for subsequent doses they'll need to get paid.
I just agreed with you. Go back and re-read.
I'm saying that slamming the fiscal responsibility for development and deployment of new medications deemed essential for continued survival onto the shoulders of people who can't even afford their rent is a guaranteed recipe that we will NEVER get out from under this.
And even if we should, by some miracle, it will fundamentally change how we value life itself. The American working family should not be held financially responsible for mistakes made by the top leadership.
The American working family deserves the help it needs.
No, it is not free, no I do not believe anything is ever free, no I do not believe in free lunch. I also do not believe in Charles Dickens as a moral plank on protecting society.
I believe in the constitutional guidelines on promoting and providing for the general welfare.
And if that means that a chunk of the hundreds of billions being handed out to Fortune 500 corporations needs to be diverted, then so be it.
You ARE AWARE that Fortune 500 corporations have received at least one if not TWO 500 billion dollar handouts, yes?
Okay then, divert two hundred billion of that and earmark it for a dose of Remdesivir for every person living in the United States, legal or illegal.
If that is not enough, divert another two hundred billion.
These corporations have stashed TRILLIONS of dollars offshore and gotten away with it for years, and furthermore, once a majority of Americans begin to come out of this dark hole, they're going to spend plenty of money and these corporations will be made whole again anyway.
I don't buy the notion that they are all suddenly insolvent and those trillions they stashed overseas just evaporated.
I am arguing about the slices of pie being given out, to whom those slices are going and how big a slice they are getting.
I am arguing that the American working family needs and deserves more than what they are getting if we expect to see people going back to work and moving toward recovery.
Big businesses are being made whole. Make the American working family whole instead, starting with saving their health with this essential lifesaving drug.
That is all I am arguing.
We would not (hopefully) be even having this argument if this was a real life version of "Independence Day" where an alien race has decided we are their lunch.
This pandemic might as well BE that alien race, and while we are arguing, it IS eating us.
