A pair of Democrats are mounting an aggressive push for the federal government to take over buying and distributing much-needed medical supplies, as states continue to battle one another for precious equipment to fight the coronavirus.
Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) is leading the effort with a bill that would give the Federal Emergency Management Agency control over supplying medical equipment to states — from ventilators and X-ray machines to masks and gloves — during this and future pandemics. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is sponsoring a companion bill in the Senate.
“We’ve got a shortage and scarcity of essential medical supplies and equipment, where states are bidding against one another,” Brown said in an interview. “It’s not the most efficient way to either provide or distribute. And the federal government has got to take responsibility.”
In a sign of the sparsity of such equipment, some states are even keeping their limited stock under military guard.
The bill is one of multiple pieces of legislation introduced by Democrats in recent days that would centralize at least some parts of the supply and delivery of medical supplies during an emergency. Brown says their legislation is “the most aggressive” on this issue and something he and Warren hope to see discussed as part of the next round of coronavirus relief package negotiations.
“We can’t confront a national crisis with bidding wars and massive price increases — we need a national strategy,” Warren said. “If President Trump won’t do his job, Congress will do it for him.”
But it’s unclear how much Republicans would be interested, if at all, given GOP lawmakers are loath to support any additional federal control over states.
Brown is undeterred, saying his effort comes after his home-state governor, Republican Larry Hogan, purchased 500,000 coronavirus test kits from South Korea due to states’ limited supplies. Brown’s measure seeks to make such direct purchases unnecessary.
But most of Maryland’s test kits have yet to be used, sitting in a undisclosed location protected by the state National Guard, Hogan told The Washington Post on Thursday. Brown attributes the unused kits to a lack of medical swabs needed to complete the test and says his bill would prevent that kind of mishap from happening again.
The situation in Maryland isn’t unique. As the coronavirus continues to spread across the U.S., states have been thrown into a highly competitive effort to procure supplies, competing against each other as they try to secure personal protective equipment for frontline workers, often at a much higher cost than normal.
The dearth of supplies and lack of organization at the federal level — President Donald Trump has waffled between a White House-led response and dismissively telling states the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” — has led some governors to get creative.
For example, in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker has relied on the New England Patriots to help deliver 1.2 million face masks purchased from China, using the football team’s private plane and semitractor-trailer.
And even that isn’t a solution — in recent weeks there have been questions in both the U.S. and Britain about the effectiveness of PPE supplies, including masks and ventilators, procured from China.
In addition, some states never even see the supplies they purchased. New York is currently trying to recover $69 million it awarded a Silicon Valley engineer with no medical device experience to produce ventilators that never arrived, BuzzFeed reported Wednesday. And lawmakers in both parties have complained of securing supplies for their states only to see them outbid and shipped elsewhere at the last minute.
The Brown-Warren bill would aim to prevent situations like that from ever happening again, the Maryland Democrat argued, by centralizing the supply chain operation through FEMA. In addition, Congress would receive biweekly progress reports for the duration of the pandemic.
“This establishes the government at the sole payer and distributor. You’re going to eliminate states bidding against states, private sector against public sector,” Brown said.
“And not for everything under the sun. Just for those items, the supplies and the devices, where the FEMA director has determined, in consultation with the appropriate officials, that you’re seeing price increases that exceed 15 percent.”
If the idea isn’t incorporated into the next coronavirus relief package, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she wants to move in the coming weeks, Brown is already looking at other legislative vehicles that are guaranteed to move through Congress this year.
One option for Brown, who serves on the House Armed Services panel, is the annual defense authorization, which Congress has passed every year since 1961. Leaders of the panel released a statement earlier this week saying they’re still aiming to complete this year’s defense bill, despite the coronavirus interruption.
“I’m less concerned with how what vehicle is used. But more concerned that we get this provision passed,” Brown said.