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Price controls for vaccines?

The path to reaching every small town and village runs through having no price controls

Coronavirus, vaccine, covid, drugs, price
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Illustration: Ajay Mohanty

Ajay Shah
The great Indian vaccination story has begun. Private health care firms will be required for reaching the masses. A basic tenet of economic policy is that price controls work poorly. If price limits are brought in, this will limit private outreach to cities. India’s experience with household finance offers a nice example of an analogous problem, where reaching the remote corners of India required price determination by market forces. The government should do less, and let the market system work its way through this problem. If there is a desire to intervene, the best path is vaccine vouchers.

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