Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel unabashedly defended the company's plans to raise the US list price of its COVID-19 vaccines by more than 400 percent—despite creating the vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, receiving $1. Over the course of the two-hour hearing, Bancel dismissed the role that NIH scientists played in developing the vaccine while emphasizing that the company built up its platform before the pandemic with $3. With no ground gained, Sanders turned to one final plea in the hearing:lower than what other countries around the world are paying? Or are, once again, we going to pay the highest prices?"