Weighing the price of vaccines

Sometimes, it's easy to overlook the business challenges that some doctors face in running a small practice. KFF Health News published an article about how some pediatric clinics ordered too much COVID-19 vaccines, and had to throw out expired inventory. Although pediatric clinics face similar questions for some other vaccines, it seems that COVID-19 vaccines have a relatively short shelf life, exacerbating the situation.

It seems that some of these concerns can be solved systematically if manufacturers were willing to shoulder more risk and make enough vaccines available on short notice (for example, by streamlining their manufacturing process to be "just in time"). Given that pediatricians might be stocking smaller quantities of the vaccine -- which might lead to shortages at those clinics -- manufacturers might have a financial incentive to figure out how to reduce the uncertainty that pediatricians face when deciding how much to order.