Same old story...
Quote:
Thirteen years ago, a group of U.S. public health officials came up with a plan to address what they regarded as one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.
The breathing-assistance machines tended to be bulky, expensive and limited in number. The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis.
Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway.
And then things suddenly veered off course. A multibillion-dollar maker of medical devices bought the small California company that had been hired to design the new machines. The project ultimately produced zero ventilators.
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They had finished the design and sent three samples to Washington for evaluation. They performed and were a third of the price of the machines sold by the giant that bought the company for $100 million then asked the government for $1.5 million more, got it and promptly assigned everyone working on it to different projects. Later the giant was bought by Medtronic who says, What ventilators?
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The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.
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