13 yrs ago, a group of US public health officials decided to address one of the medical system's crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

The plan was to build inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or other crisis.

Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway.

Then they hit a wall. A bigger corporation of medical devices bought the small California company that had been given the project to design the new machines. The project ultimately produced zero ventilators.

That failure delayed the development of an affordable ventilator by at least half a decade, depriving hospitals, states and the federal government of the ability to stock up.

Today, with US healthcare system buckling under the demands of the C19 pandemic, the scarcity of ventilators has become an emergency, forcing doctors to make life & death decisions on who gets to breathe and who does not.

This failed project highlighted the danger of outsourcing projects with critical public health implications to private companies. Their focus on maximizing profits cannot be aligned with the govt's goal of preparing for future crisis.

The article continues to reveal the whole history of what occurred, this is a good study on how private corporations that have grown big can manipulate the market in such a way that power gets consolidated to their ultimate benefit.