A staff report by a House Oversight subcommittee shows that the Trump Administration delayed the purchase of ventilators that had been ordered during the Obama Administration, and they then paid over $2,800 more per unit than any other purchaser, CNN reports.
Although Trump has repeatedly claimed the “cupboards were bare” of emergency supplies when he took office, his Administration suspended a 2014 contract negotiated during Obama’s term to purchase 10,000 ventilators for $3,280 each from Philips Respironics.
Repeatedly delaying the fulfillment of the contract, the Administration instead negotiated a new contract in May 2020, four months after the first coronavirus case was identified in the United States.
The contract with Philips Respironics, the same company that had been working with the Obama Administration, called for an upgrade of the ventilators that did not improve their usability or performance.
Investigating other purchases of the same ventilators, the subcommittee found that the price agreed to by the Trump Administration, $15,000 per unit, was significantly higher than the $9,327 to $12,133 paid for by every other US purchaser.
Additionally, the Trump Administration’s contract for 43,000 units–by far the largest single purchase of the version of ventilator sold by Philips–does not have to be filled by September 2022, nearly two and a half years after the order was placed. As of June 2020, only 200 ventilators have been delivered to the Department of Health and Human Services by Philips.
“The American people got ripped off, and Donald Trump and his team got taken to the cleaners,” said Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, in a statement. “The Trump Administration’s mishandling of ventilator procurement for the nation’s stockpile cost the American people dearly during the worst public health crisis of our generation.”
Trump has claimed that he’s purchased 200,000 ventilators and that the United States now leads in production of the devices.