All month we’ve been talking about Project Air Bridge, the federal government organized airlift of medical supplies which are then handed over to private sector distributors to distribute around the country. A few media reports have suggested, often on the basis of unnamed sources, that there is a 50-50 deal. The distributors agree to route 50% of the supplies to hotspots as defined by FEMA while the other 50% they can sell on an ordinary commercial basis. But we don’t have to rely on these reports. An April 8th FEMA bulletin, flagged to me by TPM Reader GG, lays it all out pretty clearly. There’s even a handy graphic.

To quote the April 8th bulletin: “Per agreements with distributors, 50 percent of supplies on each plane are for customers within the hotspot areas with most critical needs. The remaining 50 percent is fed into distributors’ normal supply chain to their customers in other areas nationwide. HHS and FEMA determine hotspot areas based on CDC data.”

Continue reading “FEMA’s 50-50 Plan” →

The Washington Post has a new story out about the chaotic and overlapping efforts to acquire and distribute medical supplies across the country. We get yet more evidence that FEMA is routinely jumping into private transactions, either at the front end of overruling a purchase or seizing it when it’s being transported to whatever hospital or state purchased it. As my hospital system board member source told me a couple days ago this isn’t just happening it’s pervasive.

Continue reading “FEMA Decides, Unless Trump or Jared Does” →

Here is a true sign of the times story. In late March the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (part of SEIU) announced that they’d discovered a stockpile of 39 million n95 masks. They proceeded to arrange for different hospitals in the region to purchase allotments from the cache. There were viral pressure campaigns launched against hospitals who didn’t rush forward to purchase. There were even bogus claims that the union had been caught ‘hoarding’ the masks.

What did happen is that the news got FEMA interested in seeing if they could seize the mask motherlode for the federal government – yet another part of the still murky confiscated supplies story. But this time things turned out differently. The US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Scott Brady, got involved because the broker who had located the masks for the union was based in Pittsburgh. But while Brady’s office and FBI agents were seeing whether they could seize the masks they discovered that the whole thing was a scam.

Continue reading “Sign of the Times” →