Government bottleneck holds back N-95 mask production
THE CASE FOR MARKET INCENTIVES TO BOOST MEDICAL SUPPLIES: The Trump administration should use market incentive provisions contained in the Defense Production Act to encourage more production of ventilators and personal protective equipment, rather than succumbing to calls to effectively nationalize the medical supply chain, argue Caleb Watney, a technology policy fellow at the R Street Institute, and Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, in an op-ed published Thursday by POLITICO’s The Agenda.
They say the White House could use Title III of the DPA to guarantee purchases of a large number of ventilators and other medical supplies at higher-than-normal prices to incentivize companies to ramp up production. “Even if the U.S. government ends up with a surplus of medical equipment, it will provide an excellent opportunity to build out our strategic medical stockpiles whose limited supplies helped accentuate this crisis in the first place,” the authors wrote.
Watney and Stapp also suggested Congress pass legislation that would transfer the liability for any faulty products from the companies to the government to speed up production. That should also be accompanied by deregulation to cut the amount of time it takes to bring new operations online. “For example, the average approval time for a production facility that is certified to make N-95 respirators is more than three months,” they wrote.
