1/27/2024 0 Comments Quadruple airbridgeIn early April, the Justice Department said it would allow the companies to collaborate because of the extraordinary demands of responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Those are fair trade measures designed to prevent big corporations from engaging in anticompetitive practices, such as price fixing, bid rigging, or conspiring to push smaller competitors out of the market. But the administration gave big distributors a pass on some enforcement of antitrust laws while they worked on the project. In normal times, collaboration between companies that dominate such a large share of the market could trigger a federal antitrust investigation. But the perks of Project Airbridge didn’t end there. These taxpayer-funded cargo flights saved the companies at least $91 million in shipping costs, the Washington Post found-savings the administration did not require them to pass on to hospitals or states buying their products. The other half they got to sell to existing customers or elsewhere on the private market. Through the public-private partnership, the supply companies were supposed to sell half the goods to virus hot spots as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ostensibly run through FEMA, Project Airbridge arranged for FedEx and UPS to airlift PPE and other medical supplies from Asia to the US in just a couple of days, as opposed to the 30 or 40 days cargo ships require. Yet through Project Airbridge, the Trump administration gave these enormous firms a sweetheart deal free of much if any oversight. They are the huge intermediaries of the health care system, distributors of prescription drugs and medical supplies, which they buy from wholesalers and then sell to hospitals, clinics, and government agencies. The companies involved in Project Airbridge are some of the biggest in the world, including McKesson, Cardinal Health, Medline, and Henry Schein. And while the project did little to ameliorate national shortages of PPE, it may have a lasting impact on everything from health care costs to the consolidation of corporate power. The short-lived Project Airbridge is an example of how the Trump administration has taken advantage of the pandemic to boost some of the country’s biggest companies while doing little more than offer hard-hit states photo ops and the chance to compete against each other to pay exorbitant prices for PPE. “However, the administration’s implementation of Project Airbridge has been completely opaque.” “The novelty and complexity of this arrangement demands heightened scrutiny and transparency,” they wrote in a letter. On April 21, 10 Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren, asked the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the project. Yet less than two months later, after many glowing PR hits, the administration decided to put an end to Project Airbridge as members of Congress and the media started demanding answers about how the supplies were being distributed, who received them, and whether the White House was making distribution decisions based on politics rather than public health. (“Young geniuses” Trump called them.) Unhappy employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) dubbed them “the children.” But it was seized upon by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who ran a volunteer shadow coronavirus task force that included his former roommate and people from private-equity companies and consulting firms like McKinsey. The origins of Project Airbridge lie with MIT experts, who originally proposed a government led and funded airlift of supplies, according to the Washington Post. “They’re big people,” Trump declared of the executives working together with the administration to deliver “record amounts of lifesaving equipment.” The heads of some of the country’s biggest medical supply distributors joined him at the podium to pay tribute to the administration and talk about the project. The first of Project Airbridge’s “big, great planes” coming from Asia had landed in New York that day, Trump said, bringing in “2 million masks and gowns, over 10 million gloves, and over 70,000 thermometers,” which would be distributed to virus hot spots across the country. On March 29, President Trump held a press briefing to tout “ Project Airbridge,” the administration’s new effort to organize and pay for airlifts of personal protective equipment and other medical supplies from abroad. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter. The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date.
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