Posted on 04/07/2020 11:59:29 AM PDT by conservative98
In 2006, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration began purchasing ventilators to allow the city to be prepared for a pandemic like the current coronavirus crisis -- only for the city to later auction them off, according to a report.
ProPublica reported Monday that the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a report in 2006 on the city's preparedness for pandemic influenza -- similar to the 1918 Spanish Flu or the 2019 novel coronavirus -- that projected the city would need thousands of extra ventilators in order to properly treat all of its residents who got sick. The plan was then put into action, with the city initially buying 500 ventilators before it ran out of money to buy more and to maintain the ones it had already stockpiled, according to ProPublica.
Those ventilators were then auctioned off some time before 2016 because the city could not afford to maintain them in working order, partially because the model of ventilator the city had purchased was no longer in production after 2009, the report said.
"We tried to fill in the gap as best we could," Dr. Issac Weisfuse, the former deputy commissioner of the city's health department, told ProPublica.
"This was beyond our control but had a direct impact on cost and viability of maintaining a stockpile," Michael Lanza, the current assistant press secretary for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said according to ProPublica.
The outlet also reported that New York City set out to purchase over one million N95 face masks -- the type suggested for use to protect against the coronavirus -- in order to distribute them to health professionals. It purchased less than one-quarter of that and the masks all eventually expired.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Mike will get it done. Oh, wait.....
Mike got it done. Reichsführer Wilhelm undid it.
The fact that I never heard that story before is yet more proof that the majority of the Republican party sides with Democraps. If REAL Republican existed, that story would be dumped on every college campus in the country, mailed to every person who is grappling with massive student debt. The fact that isn’t happening is exactly why Democraps for the past 3.5 years have been able to hold fake investigations, attempted coups and a fake impeachments and why not ONE of them has been investigated
I’m sure I do not want to meet the sorts of people
who would show up at a ventilator auction.
Fake News. Sound Bite mentality. Of course they did the right thing by releasing unneeded supplies instead of hoarding them. Of course they used the market to allocate them.
Would you rather the Ventilator Czar does it?
As long as the Feds knew about it in case they were other more grievous needs not being represented in the auction, I see no harm in auctions. Auctions are efficient allocators in scarcity.
Ask a real economist. We used to believe that here.
Mike didn’t get it done. He commissioned a report and bought only 500 intitally before he ran out of money.
You’ve hit on the crux of the matter with your comment.
Woo-Hoo Flu is a 100-year event.
It simply makes no economic sense to remain in a constant state of readiness for 100-year events.
implement a policy where when a hospital buys masks, 20% are sent to the state......That only allows a LOT of other and more thieves to sell, barter or hijack the stored product.
Typical liberal, they want someone else to pay for their stuff, like U.S. taxpayers, meanwhile they are free to spend THAT money on goofy worthless stuff they deem important, like diversity projects and taking care of illegals.
I would imagine small rural hospitals on a tight budget would bid.
and the masks all eventually expired.....How the HELL could this happen in a real world?
I'll take that one, they took the money and the money that should have been set aside for emergencies and spent it on Left wing initiatives - they are irresponsible and should all be fired and tried and jailed.
No, but you need a current scalable readiness plan, like what Trump is doing. Oh, and you don't need a blame game, unless we point the fingers where they actually should be pointed, the inept state governors.
Continuing to illustrate the problem with socialism.....you eventually run out of someone else’s money.
A lot of foreigners go to equipment auctions and they don’t care what anything costs, they just bid to win, load up a container and ship it overseas.
“It simply makes no economic sense to remain in a constant state of readiness for 100-year events.”
Why does the US Government sale flood insurance base on the 100 year event?
I live in a flood plain, I spent an extra $16k to make sure my house can survive the 100 year event. In Feb the river got within 15 feet of my house.
I was very happy to know my house was ready and I had insurance if it did happen. My neighbors were freaking out, it is nice peace of mind to know you have a plan.
Insurance is one thing. The economics of stockpiling supplies for thing that happen so rarely do not make sense.
The example given of South Carolina loading up on snow plows for the next 25-year snowfall is an apt one.
But we need a stockpile, so we need to figure out how to protect it, and how to cycle through it.
Ventilators are harder, because we need to bring them through maintenance and some use, but they don’t “expire” so we aren’t throwing them out and restocking.
CharlesWayneCT wrote:
“California did the same thing. After 2006, they purchased 4 portable hospitals on trucks. They also purchased thousands of ventilators, and hundreds of millions of masks and other PPE.
In 2011, when their budget was tight, they sold it all off.”
Who bought em?
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