https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/after-one-tweet-to-president-trump-this-man-got-69-million
On March 27, as emergency rooms in New York and across the country began filling with coronavirus
patients struggling to breathe, President Donald Trump posted on
Twitter to urge Ford and General Motors to “START MAKING VENTILATORS,
NOW!”
One of the thousands of replies
that the tweet attracted struck an equally urgent tone: “We can supply
ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT.”
Its
author was Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley. A
specialist in mobile phone technology, he currently has just 75
followers on Twitter and no apparent experience in government
contracting or medical devices.
But three days later, New York state paid Oren-Pines $69.1 million. The
payment was for 1,450 ventilators — at an astonishing $47,656 per
ventilator, at least triple the standard retail price of high-end
models.
Not a single ventilator ever arrived.
Pretty sure Chazal would've called this price gouging.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there was an immediate need for ventilators and no one else was providing them. This guy came through when the big companies didn't. Probably saved lives.
Verdict?
pretty sure they would call it theft.
ReplyDelete