Edited to add: I'm not sure what's controversial about this? What did I mess up here? People seem to disagree but aren't, as of about an hour after I replied,

Edited to add: I'm not sure what's controversial about this? What did I mess up here? People seem to disagree but aren't, as of about an hour after I replied, saying why. In a way, we're seeing this happen at the national/country scale already. Countries that can afford it ("that can be gouged the most") are buying hundreds of millions of doses and the systems that are supposed to be getting doses to countries that can't afford it appear to be going wanting. That's the problem with health care as a capitalistic market. There's no upper bound on what someone would want to pay to preserve either their life or the life of someone they care about. The only limit is on the resources that person has access to, and people will make some screamingly bad long-term decisions in order to satisfy that short-term need for cash. If we did as the grandparent proposed and opened something like a bidding market for vaccines, you'd absolutely have GoFundMe and whatever the digital equivalent of yard sales are for people who are desperate to get the vaccine but don't have the money. Hell, I already see "please venmo me some cash so I can shelter-in-place away from my relative who has COVID because I can't afford to catch it myself as I'm the only person who makes money for my household."