Well last week I wrote a blog “Thoughts on the Flu Shot” that gave some of my thoughts on the effectiveness of the flu shot. For being universally recommended, I really feel the research showing effectiveness is severely lacking. If you want more details on that go check it out.
This week I wanted to go on and talk a little more about my thoughts as to why the flu shot is so widely recommended if the evidence does not support it being very effective. And my personal conclusion is that it makes money. Now there are those that would argue and say that vaccine manufacturers do not make any money off of the flu vaccine. Here is an article in Yahoo’s finance section that basically says that. However, there is no evidence that the vaccine manufacturers don’t make money on the flu shot. All the article really says is that the flu shot does not sell for as much as other vaccines, which is true but does not mean they don’t make a profit from it. I would contend that the pharmaceutical companies are not interested on taking a loss on something like the flu shot. And besides just not taking a loss, that vaccines including the flu shot actually make them a lot of money.
Here are some other articles that paint a different picture. On CNBC this article states that in 2012, Sanofi Pasteur the “world’s biggest supplier of flu vaccines, generated flu jab sales of 884 million euros ($1.43 billion).” Now granted I do not know the cost of producing the flu vaccine but I imagine that there was probably some profit made at least that year with $1.43 billion in sales. Also from that article we find this:
Several pharmaceutical companies made a conscious decision to chase and develop the vaccines market towards the end of the last decade, as it became clear that the traditional blockbuster drug treatment model for the industry was changing. Vaccines were seen as promising from a business perspective because they could be applied to huge swathes of the population, and because the economic case for payment could be made to governments.
So taking an active role in developing a vaccine market does not sound like something you would do if it did not offer any profit. While I do not have the exact numbers of profit or loss, I feel confident that drug companies do not lose money on flu vaccines or at least not regularly if they ever do.
And as far as the regular doctor’s office, do they make any money off the flu shot? Well in this article we learn that at least one doctor, who happens to be a speaker for companies that make vaccines, seems to think that it is financially savvy for doctors to give flu shots: “Giving influenza vaccine is also good for the financial health of your practice.” He estimates that a doctor with 2,000 patients may expect to bring in from $25,000 to $42,500 due to business generated from giving flu shots. Now I don’t know if this would be the same in every practice, but making money is at least a reason that some doctors consider when giving the flu shot.
And here is one more article where someone crunched some numbers using average prices for vaccines and vaccinations rates and births in the US. The article basically looks at on average what sort of money is being made by pharmaceutical companies, doctor’s offices, and even the government from vaccinations. What they found using these averages is that including the well-baby checkup and administering vaccines that an average doctor’s office would make $3,032.87 on one child over their first five years of life. The pharmaceutical companies collectively can expect about $1,379.45 per child in their first five years of life. And finally the federal government getting excise tax from vaccines comes to $33.75 per child over the first five years of life. Now some of these numbers may not sound like much but when you consider that each year millions of children are born in the US and overall high vaccination rates and you are talking about some big money. Now this was just someone working with averages, but it does give you an idea what kind of money can be made on vaccinations.
In my mind there is ample reason to believe that vaccines are not simply produced because drug companies are simply concerned with our health. The main reason I am writing this is to give you an opportunity to hear ‘the other side of the story’ that is not commonly heard. I leave it to you to decide and make your own choices about vaccination.
References and Resources
Here are the references from the blog and also a few links that were not referenced in the blog itself.
http://www.wnd.com/2009/12/118262/ Accessed Nov. 7th, 2014
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101123545#. Accessed Nov. 7th, 2014
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-pharmaceutical-companies-dont-money-180200431.html Accessed Nov. 7th, 2014
http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/how-much-money-do-doctors-make-from-flu-shots/ Accessed Nov. 7th, 2014
http://vaxtruth.org/2011/09/how-can-it-be-about-the-money-immunizations-are-free-right/ Accessed Nov. 7th, 2014
National Vaccine Information Center: nvic.org
