A Company Promised Cheap Ventilators to the US Government, Never Delivered and Is Now Charging Quadruple the Price for New Ones

Patricia Callahan and Sebastian Rotella (ProPublica) 09 April 2020

Public Interest

Royal Philips N.V. agreed in September to sell 10,000 ventilators to the U.S. for $3,280 each. It did not deliver. But the Dutch company just announced a new deal with the government. This time, it’s charging roughly $15,000 each.

The Dutch company that received millions of taxpayer dollars to develop an affordable ventilator for pandemics, but never delivered them, has struck a much more lucrative deal with the federal government to make 43,000 ventilators at four times the price.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday that it plans to pay Royal Philips N.V. $646.7 million for the new ventilators — paying more than $15,000 each. The first 2,500 units are to arrive before the end of May, HHS said, and the rest by the end of December.

Philips refused to say which model of ventilator the government was buying. But in response to questions from ProPublica, HHS officials said the government is purchasing the Trilogy EV300, the more expensive version of the ventilator that was developed with federal funds.

The deal is a striking departure from the federal contract Philips’ Respironics division signed in September to produce 10,000 ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile at a cost of $3,280 each.

“This kind of profiteering — paying four times the negotiated price — is not only irresponsible to taxpayers but is particularly offensive when so many people are out of work,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response during the Obama administration. “And besides, most of these ventilators will come too late to make a difference in this pandemic. We’ll then ’replenish’ the stockpile at a ridiculously high price.”

“What else,” she asked, “won’t we be able to buy as a result?”

In an article March 30, ProPublica detailed how the agency’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, had anticipated a decade ago that hospitals would run short of life-saving ventilators in the event of a pandemic. BARDA tried to find a company that could produce an inexpensive, durable ventilator that could be operated by people with minimal training during a crisis. After a deal with one company fell apart, HHS in 2014 agreed to pay Philips $13.8 million to design the stockpile ventilator with an option to purchase 10,000 for $3,280 each. The company won Food and Drug Administration clearance for its Trilogy Evo Universal ventilator in July, and in September HHS put in its order. Continue Reading…

Courtesy: ProPublica.org

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raviforjustice

6 years ago

Just as messages are going viral on social media as to how this pandemic would reshape equations, both personal and societal, with the haves realizing that they cannot leave the have nots to themselves and that peace and harmony can exist only if certain minimum quality of life is assured for everybody, here comes this devastating report that nothing is going to change and we will be back to where we are pandemic or no pandemic.