LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is leading a coalition of attorneys general who are working to regulate the prices of medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the attorney general's office.
Nessel's office said the coalition sent a letter to Congress Wednesday asking lawmakers to temporarily fix the prices of medical equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.
Nessel's office said the state has experienced shortages in ventilators and personal protective equipment for not only hospitals and health care providers, but for federal, state, local and tribal governments as well.
The attorney general's office said the shortages in these products has led to competitive bidding wars, which ultimately amount to taxypayer-funded subsidies to the corporate supplier of the equipment.
Nessel's office said the coalition is asking Congress to regulate prices to fight against artificial inflation and to avoid those with supplies "from profiteering by playing government agencies and hospitals against each other, while the spread of COVID-19 continues and more Americans die."
“COVID-19 has stretched thin the health care industry’s supply chain and it is threatening to drain public coffers as governments at all levels are pitted against each other in bidding wars, fighting to procure the equipment their residents and employees desperately need,” Nessel said. “This country needs a united effort to keep the health care industry from unjustly profiting while the American people suffer. In normal times, supply and demand drive prices. But in a public health emergency when lives are at stake, government intervention is sometimes needed, and I urge Congress to act.”
“Congress should intervene and enact legislation—similar to the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 enacted ruing World War II—fixing the prices of medical supplies and equipment that hospitals and emergency treatment centers of this country so desperately need in fighting the war against this ‘invisible enemy,’” the coalition’s letter states.
The full letter can be read here.
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