White House Considers $1 Billion Price Tag for Ventilators -- and Has Second Thoughts

[demmiblue]

Source: NYT

WASHINGTON — The White House had been preparing on Wednesday to announce amid an escalating pandemic that a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems would begin producing as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators when word suddenly came down that the announcement was off.

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, with several hundred million dollars to be paid upfront to General Motors to retool the car parts plant in Kokomo, Ind., where the ventilators would be made with Ventec’s technology.

Government officials said the deal may still happen but that they are looking at a dozen or more 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.

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.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/us/politics/coronavirus-ventilators-trump.html

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Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[stillcool]

1. they'll be coming very soon...

next week. Along with those tests.

[marble falls]

8. Coming soon? ...

They're not even breathing hard.

[stillcool]

9. you're bad...but..

with Republicans, what can you expect?

[Flaleftist]

14. Not even necessary. We will be at zero cases any day now.

I can't believe anyone still takes that fucking clown seriously.

[DENVERPOPS]

23. And Trump's income tax filings.....LOL N/C

[Firestorm49]

2. Begin producing? At this point, beginning? WTF!

What a waste of an administration. Please go down in flames with my blessing.

[msongs]

3. that's $12,500 each, 1 billion divided by 80 K nt

[William Seger]

5. Catastrophe capitalism (nt)

[Baitball Blogger]

10. Is this really happening??

The media needs to report how the Trump administration screwed this one up to, creating a bidding war that created ridiculous prices!

[mr_lebowski]

26. Aren't bidding wars supposed work the other way around?

Guess they can't even do simple economics correctly.

[NickB79]

11. A single ventilator can save dozens of lives over the course of a year

$1000/patient is NOT an extravagant amount to pay, especially for a nation that's willing to spend TRILLIONS over the past 20 years bombing brown people to dust and ash.

[iluvtennis]

15. Which is mid level price. Read artucle a ventilator can cost $4,000 to $40,000. nt

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Triple timing existing plants

might be a lot quicker and cheaper. Limiting factors are probably critical parts and electronics, so you get someone who knows manufacture and push them to source and expand. You push! Not sit on proposals and shop for a good deal for a week already

[SunSeeker]

20. Exactly. Fuck GM.

[pangaia]

6. I've seen articles on a number of small groups of people, very small companies,

around the world who have figured out how to make them pretty easily and cheaply

Too tired tonite to go looking for links.

IN UK I think for one... maybe even US.

[Scarsdale]

32. Dyson vacuum plant

is making them. Jared is likely delaying the decision until his BROTHER has his deal in place. If they want something for tRump to announce, here is a suggestion. "I am resigning the presidency immediately, so someone COMPETENT can take over" That would work for me. Better late than never.

[Talitha]

7. Obama/Biden would have kick-started this ASAP.

November cannot get here fast enough!

[tinymontgomery]

12. Aren't We Giving them a ton of bailout money?

Aren't We Giving them a ton of money from this bailout?
I'd tell them no bailout money if you don't make the ventilators with no charging
us.

[Sloumeau]

13. They will keep promising ventilators, even if they are too cheap to buy them. nt

[NBachers]

17. Vaporlators

[airplaneman]

19. Yes Moisture Vaporators

/revision/latest?cb=20131104050716

[Flaleftist]

16. Trump spent over $100 million playing golf, but $1 billion is too much to save American lives?

[DENVERPOPS]

24. Screw the 100+ million for golf

He just handed 500 BILLION to Corporations for doing nothing, and he is stalling on one billion for respirators???????

Putin is doing an unbelievably good job of getting Trump & Cronies to DESTROY AMERICA, or he will show us pictures of a russian slut peeing on Trump..., some guy blowing Lindsay Graham, etc etc etc........

[Tbear]

18. Nice!

The health of our country is waiting for the lowest bidder.
Sarcasm mode is on.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. When it came time to 'liberate Iraq', we didn't blink at spending 720 million dollars a day.

A DAY.

[MoonlitKnight]

22. 1 billion is what I estimated a while ago

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213077109

[McCamy Taylor]

25. Trump needs bribes

[Ghost Dog]

27. Unlike the pics in the OP, this is the proposed Ventec device:

I'd call this a "smart", and relatively expensive, although comprehensive, option.

The UK is looking to produce the new design you see here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/airbus-dyson-firms-waiting-uk-green-light-produce-ventilators-coronavirus

See also: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/26/dyson-and-gtech-answer-uk-call-for-ventilator-design-and-production-to-support-covid-19-response/

[intrepidity]

28. One billion for Boeing? No problem. Ventilators? Ehh, no.

Shithead.

[Brainfodder]

29. Professor emeritus of making shit up, what could go wrong?

1296 people have died in just the USA, and this asshole is working the system for $ at every turn?

If it looks like treason...

[BumRushDaShow]

30. The better strategy is to deploy 3-D printers to make the parts

and then get an assembly process going.

There is no way that some car factory can go from assembly of a "car" to assembly of a piece of medical equipment that requires very tight specs.

GE had pretty much moved into medical equipment and would be one who could do it. And small appliance manufacturers might - but we had pretty much stopped making small appliances in the U.S. and import them from South Korea or China.

HOWEVER - one whole class of small appliances still made here (to a degree) are consumer vacuum cleaners. Companies like Lux (originally Electrolux), Oreck, ShopVac, and even Maytag (which includes a whole pile of brands like Hoover) make them. These companies have plants in the U.S. that make vacuum cleaners. They basically make/assemble hoses and connectors, as well as install motors that create a vacuum and/or manage other types of air handling, and I would think their manufacturing/assembly processes might be more easily adapted to make a ventilator.

[crickets]

35. See, a healthy person with a normal working brain can come up with good ideas like this.

You're expecting the same from a greedy narcissistic sociopath, and sad to say it's just not going to happen.

[BumRushDaShow]

36. I saw a thread early this morning where one company in the UK IS going to do this!

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213182716



(ETA maybe his buddy in the UK, who has now contracted it, will suggest the same for here)

[crickets]

37. Great news - thanks for the link!

[Walleye]

31. Invoke the NDA and set the price. Fire Kushner.

[Vinca]

33. Trump fiddles while James Dyson of vacuum cleaner fame designed a ventilator in 10 days

and is about to produce 15,000 for the pandemic. Maybe he'll share the technology so local manufacturers can make them. By the time GM and Ventec are up and running - if they ever are - it will be too late.

[Hestia]

34. When FUBAR meets Disaster Capitalism clashing with Jared

At the center of the discussion about how to ramp up the production of ventilators is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House aide, who has told people that he was called in two weeks ago by Vice President Mike Pence to produce more coronavirus test kits and who has now turned his attention to ventilators.

Last week, General Motors, Ventec Life Systems and a coalition of business executives called StopTheSpread.org issued a statement saying that Ventec would “leverage G.M.’s logistics, purchasing and manufacturing expertise to build more of their critically important ventilators,” including some portable units.

Okay, so now we know who it is that wanting everyone to get back to work while they do the paperwork to get with hedge funds, private capital, etc. There's money in them there hospitals...

And while the chief executive of General Motors, Mary T. Barra, was enthused about the ventilator idea, Mr. Drumpf’s own aides had not embraced the G.M.-Ventec partnership — in part because they had not seen the specifics of the proposal.

That number then shrank to 7,500 ventilators in the initial run, or maybe 5,000, an apparent recognition that auto transmissions and ventilators had very little in common. Those numbers are in flux and so are the Drumpf administration’s because the White House cannot decide how many ventilators it wants.

The $1.5 billion price tag comes to around $18,000 a ventilator. And the overall cost, by comparison, is roughly equal to buying 18 F-35s, the Pentagon’s most advanced fighter jet.

...and here we go...

I have a question - how much have these corporations have made so far from Dead Peasant Policies? House needs to rule those illegal too or give the policies to spouses and families for burials and to eat.