White House Considers $1 Billion Price Tag for Ventilators — and Has Second Thoughts
A deal with General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to produce tens of thousands of the critical lifesaving devices seemed imminent. Then the announcement was pulled back.
The decision to cancel the announcement, according to government officials, came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it needed more time to assess whether the estimated cost was prohibitive — more than $1 billion...
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By early Thursday evening, at the president’s daily news briefing with his coronavirus task force, there was still nothing to announce, and the outcome of the deliberations remained unclear.
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The shortage of ventilators has emerged as one of the major criticism of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus. The need to quickly equip hospitals across the country with tens of thousands more of the devices to treat those most seriously ill with the virus was not anticipated despite the Trump administration’s own projection in a simulation last year that millions of people could be hospitalized. And even now, the effort to produce them has been confused and disorganized.
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...Some government officials expressed concern about the possibility of ordering too many ventilators, leaving them with an expensive surplus.
As [FEMA] has been sorting through offers, trying to weigh production capability and costs, hospitals in New York and elsewhere were reporting a desperate need for more ventilators which are critical in treating respiratory problems in a fast-rising tide of severe coronavirus cases.
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...Sunday, Mr. Trump sounded at least on Twitter as if a deal was done to mass-produce the ventilators, even though it was unclear who was going to pay for equipping the General Motors plant or how long that process would take.
“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?”
[And of course he will not trigger the Defense Production Act by which he could have ordered to industry to produce them in this "war." War? Are you kidding? Donald Trump in a war? He'll do anything he can to avoid war. He's always been Private Bone Spurs.]
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Administration officials said Thursday that they were struggling to understand just how many ventilators the new venture could make.
The initial projection, one senior administration official said, was that after three weeks of preparation it could produce an initial run of 20,000 ventilators, or about two-thirds of what Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York recently said his state alone needs to cover the influx of coronavirus patients expected in two weeks, if not sooner.
That number then shrank to 7,500 ventilators in the initial run, or maybe 5,000, a recognition, it seemed, that auto transmissions and ventilators had very little in common. Those numbers are in flux and so are the Trump administration's because the White House cannot decide how many ventilators it wants.
