While states across the country are pleading with the federal government to help them secure tens of thousands of desperately-needed ventilators to deal with the overwhelming influx of coronavirus patients, the White House canceled a deal with General Motors to produce them over the price tag.
Ventilators are not cheap, but people will die without them as the pandemic rages on.
New York alone needs between 30,000 and 40,000 of them. President Donald Trump could invoke the Defense Production Act to immediately get these medical devices into production. But he has failed to do so in yet another failure to respond properly to a crisis.
Instead, Trump is trying to make deals with companies. And he supposedly had one in place as he bragged on Twitter this past Sunday.
Ford, General Motors and Tesla are being given the go ahead to make ventilators and other metal products, FAST! @fema Go for it auto execs, lets see how good you are? @RepMarkMeadows @GOPLeader @senatemajldr
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2020
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But that all came crashing down on Wednesday.
According to the New York Times:
The White House had been preparing to reveal on Wednesday a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems that would allow for the production of as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators to respond to an escalating pandemic when word suddenly came down that the announcement was off.
The decision to cancel the announcement, government officials say, came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it needed more time to assess whether the estimated cost was prohibitive. That price tag was more than $1 billion, with several hundred million dollars to be paid upfront to General Motors to retool a car parts plant in Kokomo, Ind., where the ventilators would be made with Ventec’s technology.”
Now would be a good time to point out that the stimulus package alone costs $2 trillion, so $1 billion for ventilators is a drop in the bucket.
And representatives for both companies say that they are ready to move forward with production.
A General Motors spokesman said that ‘Project V,’ as the ventilator program is known, was moving very fast, and a company official said ‘there’s no issue with retooling.’
A Ventec representative agreed.
‘Ventec and G.M. have been working at breakneck speed to leverage our collective expertise in ventilation and manufacturing to meet the needs of the country as quickly as possible and arm medical professionals with the number of ventilators needed to save lives,’ said Chris O. Brooks, Ventec’s chief strategy officer.”
But Trump put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of overseeing the FEMA effort, and he apparently wants the ventilators to be cheap. Unfortunately, his cheapness is going to cost lives that could have been saved.
Kushner and FEMA also complained about alleged target changes in which the number of ventilators the two companies could initially mass-produce has dropped. But at this point, any number of ventilators is acceptable as long as they are being made. Now the Trump administration is pursuing other potential deals, thus wasting time instead of getting production rolling right now.
Government officials said that the deal might still happen but that they are examining at least a dozen other proposals. And they contend that an initial promise that the joint venture could turn out 20,000 ventilators in short order had shrunk to 7,500, with even that number in doubt. Longtime emergency managers at FEMA are working with military officials to sort through the competing offers and federal procurement rules while under pressure to give President Trump something to announce.”
Again, Trump must invoke the Defense Production Act and get manufacturing industries across the country into this fight. Anything less is unacceptable and demonstrates his incompetence. No price should be too high to save American lives.
Featured image via screen capture
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