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Comment by jlebar | Hacker News Reader

> A hospital charged my friend $5k for three stitches. They could pay 8 cents more per mask. But they care more about $$$ than the long term health of the country.

Couldn't we say the same thing about the owner of this factory? He could gear up and then pay unemployment for laid-off workers after the crisis ends; he did it once.

I am also not a fan of our health-care system, but...it's complicated.

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Last time, ramping up almost bankrupted the business, and left it with an extra $1M in debt.

Seems like the government should just remove the risk of being the business of critical supplies. Obviously we didn't have enough supplies in stockpile it would benefit the US to have a dedicated factory to produce a constant stream of PPE for the next 10 years. This stuff is so cheap to make that not stockpiling it is just stupid. These kind of supplies are used by everyone everywhere that it's a waste of time and money trying to negotiate critical supply stockpiles on the local or state level. This needs to be at the national level to be able to leverage the power of the US govt. Using the DPA, the govt can come into 3M or any of the other manufacturers and say "you are going to sell us 50M masks per year for the next 10 years". After a couple years, you have a healthy stockpile that can either be used in a pandemic or changed out for fresh supplies over time. It's a shame to throw out expired medical supplies but having a consistent supply chain going for years is good to make sure that there is a standard product out there that you don't need to worry about changing.

FYI, 50M masks in pandemic is 1/7th of what country needs in a day.

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