Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Sunday called Moderna’s plan to more than quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine “enormously greedy.”

Sanders has been railing against the planned price hike since Moderna’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal last month the company is considering raising the price to $110 to $130 per dose after the government-purchased supply runs out later this year.

Currently, the federal government pays about $26 per shot for Moderna’s updated booster shots.

The government made the shots available at no cost to consumers, but U.S. officials have said vaccine makers should switch to standard commercial distribution when the supply is exhausted, which could happen as early as this summer.

“I would think this type of pricing is consistent with the value” the vaccine provides, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told The Journal.

Moderna’s price hike would be in line with what Pfizer is reportedly considering. Sanders, however, has been more vocal about Moderna because it developed its vaccine with billions of dollars of taxpayer funding. Pfizer declined federal funding to develop its vaccine, only agreeing to sell the shots once it had created a successful vaccine.

Moderna also teamed up with government researchers at the National Institutes of Health to produce its vaccine.

“The NIH co-authored, worked together to create the vaccine,” Sanders told CBS’s “Face the Nation" on Sunday. “Taxpayers put billions of dollars into the development of the vaccine, guaranteed sales for the vaccine.

“All right, and then what happens after the government stockpile of the vaccine expires? These guys say, ‘We're going to quadruple the price of the vaccine.’ And by the way, in the last two years, the CEO made $5 billion and its other guys made billions of dollars. Is that really what should be happening? Truth is pharmaceutical industry is enormously greedy, charging us outrageously, uncontrollably high prices.”

Sanders made a similar point in a letter to Bancel in January. Last week, Sanders called on the Moderna CEO to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which the Vermont senator chairs.

Sanders said last week Bancel has agreed to testify at a hearing March 22. Moderna announced last week that its COVID vaccine will remain free to insured people and that uninsured or underinsured people will also receive the shots at no cost through a new patient assistance program.

“Moderna remains committed to ensuring that people in the United States will have access to our COVID-19 vaccines regardless of ability to pay,” the company said.

"Everyone in the United States will have access to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine regardless of their ability to pay," it added.

Moderna did not explain how the program will work.

Sanders on Sunday called Moderna’s announcement an “amazing coincidence” because it came as he was applying pressure for Bancel to testify. Sanders said lawmakers would “take a look at what that patient program is about,” calling it “a step in the right direction.”