Although epidemics are generally understood as lying within the domain of biomedicine, legal and social arrangements play crucial roles in determining whether or not infectious disease outbreaks grow into epidemics and even pandemics. Yet epidemics are challenging terrain for legal regulation. …
[Covid-19’s challenges] pose important questions to policymakers: How will the FDA decide that the potential benefits of controversial novel drugs and vaccines outweigh their risks? And how will Medicare—tasked by the CARES Act with reimbursing COVID-related hospital fees—make expensive therapies available to uninsured essential workers who are the most vulnerable to the virus and least able to pay? Thankfully, these uncertainties are not uncharted territory:Decades of experience with HIV/AIDS have shaped regulatory institutions and provided new strategies for seeking legal remedy to reduce the price of expensive drugs.