the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security the US government officials, including representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and US President Donald Trump, have confirmed that the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) is running low on supplies and equipment. The SNS maintains inventory of a myriad of supplies and equipment—including pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment (PPE), and ventilators—for rapid deployment during emergencies; however, it “was never…designed to fight a 50-state pandemic.” While products are being shipped to states and health systems directly from manufacturers and distributors in the commercial market, states are still struggling to obtain necessary supplies and equipment. There are numerous reports that states are bidding against each other, as well as foreign competitors, to secure materiel to support their response activities, and multiple governors have called on the federal government to provide additional support. The US government has reportedly shipped millions of pieces of equipment and other supplies nationwide, but it appears that the available inventory has been insufficient, and domestic production has not scaled up quickly enough to meet the existing demand. As the US epidemic continues to grow, so too, will the demand, which will inevitably place even more strain on existing resources.
Unconfirmed reports are circulating that the United States could be suspending overseas aid shipments in an effort to secure sufficient domestic supply of critical supplies and equipment. Reportedly, the US government has been working with a number of other countries to obtain much needed supplies, including PPE; however, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been shipping similar supplies to other countries, including some of the same countries from which US officials were seeking support. Several US government sources reportedly confirmed the suspension, but President Trump denied it as yesterday’s White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing.
This leaves many people wondering,who did we end up moving our domestic production of PPE over seas leaving us so vulnerable , the answer lies in something known as the “law of unintended consequences”.
To attempt to fund “Obamacare” the congress under president Obama passed several major tax increases including the Obamacare Medical Device Tax. Critics at the time voiced concerns that the tax would drive medical device production over seas and clearly it did .
Fortunately President Trump signed the repeal of this Obamacare tax in December 2019, because this tax would be particularly harmful while America battles the coronavirus. Medical device companies produce tens of thousands of products, from respirators to imaging equipment to hospital beds. This Obamacare tax was set to impose a 2.3 percent excise tax on total sales of each medical device company, even those companies who did not turn a profit in a given year. The specter of this tax put American medical device companies at a disadvantage to overseas firms. The medical device tax was originally scheduled to take effect in 2013 but was repeatedly delayed at the insistence of Republicans in congress. Trump put this tax out of its misery for good.