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The covid tests mailed to me by the US government are made in China. I'm sure the government contracted it to a US supplier who bought the tests from China...bu

by fma 5y ago

The covid tests mailed to me by the US government are made in China. I'm sure the government contracted it to a US supplier who bought the tests from China...but come on . 2 years in and we aren't producing even Covid tests? Why can't the US government mandate hospitals need to purchase a percentage of their supplies from US manufacturers in order to receive medicaid/Medicare. It can be 10, 20%, low enough to keep costs down by importing the bulk from China, but high enough to maintain a base that can be ramped up.

rbobby 5y ago
> Why can't the US government mandate hospitals need to purchase a percentage of their supplies from US manufacturers in order to receive medicaid/Medicare. Trade agreements most likely. I would not be surprised if that sort of preferential treatment would count as a subsidy and be actionable under NAFTA (whatever it's called now).
- dehrmann 5y ago
  We also have a healthcare cost crisis. It wouldn't just be masks, it would be literally everything the hospital buys, and it would "tie their hands from getting the best price for patients" (I guarantee you a Republican would use a similar line in a campaign if that proposal went through.
iratewizard 5y ago
There are a number of contributing factors. The lack of manufacturing in the US, which you can blame on bean counters wanting to utilize Chinese slave labor. A tax system that prefers the lower wage workers be either on the dole, work illegally, or work 3 gig-based jobs. A kafkaesque government contracting system dreamed up and continually patched by government workers. The same government workers that would work private sector if they were given a chance. But, they often can't because a lack of experience, aptitude or drive.
- xapata 5y ago
  Slave labor? Surely the ratio of Chinese laborers who feel enslaved is low enough that it's inappropriate to describe Chinese labor on the whole as slave labor.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Some are literally slaves. Many are nearly so. Giving people a thin veneer of token but not real freedom and token but not fair salary or decent working conditions doesn't absolve you of abuse. Raise people in an environment where people learn that how they are being treated is right and make everyone fear dissent and you just won't hear about many peoples feelings from the other side of the world. Obfuscation is the name of the game in the 21st century, make absolute things grey areas, and add layers of abstraction to the extent that you can't really tell what's being done or whose fault it is so that the same kinds of exploitation can keep going on and it's not so easy to be opposed to it because finding the target is just hard.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      Hey, now I understand people who insult people by saying they have savior complex! It’s all about thinking you have agency and other people don’t. > Many are nearly so. Giving people a thin veneer of token but not real freedom and token but not fair salary or decent working conditions doesn't absolve you of abuse. “Real freedom”? “Fair salary”? “Decent working conditions”? What makes you think Chinese people can’t make their own choices? They’ve been leaving the countryside nonstop for 70 years. The pay for unskilled labor has been going up pretty much nonstop since Deng opened up. China has a lot bad about it but I doubt you would be pretending Thai people are unthinking automatons and they’re about as rich as Chinese. > Raise people in an environment where people learn that how they are being treated is right and make everyone fear dissent and you just won't hear about many peoples feelings from the other side of the world. Indeed. You could make children sit down, shut up and do as they’re told all day five days a week if you just told people it was normal. You could invade and bomb other countries with impunity. You could support other countries in intervening in civil wars to keep them going without end. Good thing we’re free. Good thing we right thinking people would never do anything like that.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Part of the issue is that American businesses are not always better. So a requirement of purchasing subpar overpriced products just because they're American-made doesn't help anyone. They need to find ways to create innovative manufacturing in America.
- freeopinion 5y ago
  Simple naive economics suggests otherwise. If a 10% domestic requirement keeps demand artificially high, competition will enter the market. New factories, etc. will spring up to get a piece of the fat. They will compete on price, quality, etc.--all the usual points of competition. People will get creative to get their piece of that pie. (Of course some of the creativity will be figuring out ways to subcontract it to China and still count as American.)
  - svnt 5y ago
    I mean you got the naive economics part right. These kinds of contracts are selected based on relationships, not product quality or even business acumen. In your mind the government conducts regular technical product evaluations of every small business that attempts to make masks at scale? That isn’t reality.
    - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
      They are saying each individual hospital would have to choose a domestic manufacturer for atleast part of their supply. This would cause more domestic manufacturers to start up and compete for each hospitals business. The rule would affect the hospitals directly, not the mask makers.
- gizmo686 5y ago
  At a minimum it is a jobs program, and so can be viewed as part of the welfare state (a lot of government spending falls, at least partially, into this category). Perhaps more importantly, it provides a national strategic interest that is not easily captured through economic analysis. When times are good and international trade happens smoothly this is not important, but when the international market breaks down for some reason, having domestic production gives our government more options in how to respond. We saw this with covid, when every nation was scrambling critical resources to deal with the public health emergency. We see this now with Russia, who is regretting how dependent they on foreign trade; and in Europe who are regretting how dependent they are on Russian energy.
jjulius 5y ago
>2 years in and we aren't producing even Covid tests? It's an error to assume that there are absolutely no COVID tests made in the US simply because the small handful you received wasn't. For instance, the popular over-the-counter at-home test manufactured by Abbott is made in the US, except for swabs (mix of Thailand and US) due to supply/demand issues. https://www.globalpointofcare.abbott/en/product-details/binaxnow-covid-19-antigen-self-test-us.html https://www.globalpointofcare.abbott/en/product-details/bina...
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Abbott sells their Binax test in the US for like 5x the price they sell the same test for in Europe, because the FDA was slow to approve other brands of rapid tests and used questionable criteria,† so they had substantial monopoly pricing power while other vendors’ tests were restricted. If the only way US test production can compete is via predatory price gouging, that’s hardly a sign of health. †: The criterion was performance vs. PCR test, even though PCR and antigen tests measure different things, so that the vendors who slipped through the regulation were those who best gamed the test studies, while various other vendors with tests that perform nearly identically in practice failed FDA study criterion. The FDA refused to accept a performance comparison of new antigen tests vs. already approved antigen tests.
- hatware 5y ago
  > It's an error to assume that there are absolutely no COVID tests made in the US simply because the small handful you received wasn't. It's an error to imply they were making this assumption in the first place. I, too, am baffled that two years into a pandemic, any tests are coming from China. Didn't the whole thing _start_ there?
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    Why would one not want to get tests for a disease from the place where the disease started?
    - hatware 5y ago
landemva 5y ago
USA can restrict import of medical devices and already makes it broadly illegal to import medical drugs. https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/it-legal-me-personally-import-drugs https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/it-legal-me-persona... (I'm not advocating for these restrictions.)
karmasimida 5y ago
The manufacturing cost in US is too high, but the productivity isn't proportionally higher. Regulations and labor protection is good for workers, but it will increase cost and if those manufacturers have choice they will source their suppliers elsewhere. Other comments also mentioned, that made in US isn't really a hallmark of quality across the board, if the consumers are expected to pay 2x-3x more, then it better has something extraordinary to offer, I don't think mask had that much differentiation
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  I don't think it's due to manufacturing costs. Just look at how much insulin costs to make and the price it's sold at in the US.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    This is how companies think: If you can make something in the US for $5 and sell it for $300 you make $295 profit. If you can make it in China and ship it to the US for $4 you make $296 profit. Therefore its better to make it in China. They disregard literally every other benefit.
    - q-big 5y ago
      What you give as an example is a product with insanely high margins. Here, it indeed makes sense to produce it in your home country, because it won't make a huge difference. Most products on a market have slim margins and here such production costs make a huge difference in profit if the buyer is not willing to pay much more for products (partially) produced in the home country.
  - karmasimida 5y ago
    3M N95 masks are 1.9 dollars each, while the Chinese ones KN95 are 0.4 each, korea made kf94 masks are between 0.5 - 0.8. Unless 3M masks have some magic in itself (like make me immune to covid), the pricing doesn't seem very appetizing I think it is pretty self explanatory.
ch4s3 5y ago
The FDA and CDC made it illegal for US hospitals, companies, and universities to produce COVID tests until after the CDC effort to produce them had already failed twice. By then there was a booming business in China and South Korea making tests. We only knew about the outbreak in Seattle because some brave scientists broke the law and ran their own tests. I would also add, as other people have mentioned, that domestic manufacturing requirements are at best over priced jobs programs through the back door.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 5y ago
> Why can't the US government mandate hospitals need to purchase a percentage of their supplies from US manufacturers Off the top of my head: 1. what if US manufacturers can't supply them in sufficient quantity 2. what if US manufacturers' delivery dates are too far in the future 3. what if US manufacturers' product does not meet standard 4. what exactly is a US manufacturer anyway, in a world with a global supply chain and complex ownership structures? 5. what if there's only one US manufacturer, and so can charge monopoly prices?

by fma 5y ago

rbobby 5y ago

> Why can't the US government mandate hospitals need to purchase a percentage of their supplies from US manufacturers in order to receive medicaid/Medicare. Trade agreements most likely. I would not be surprised if that sort of preferential treatment would count as a subsidy and be actionable under NAFTA (whatever it's called now).

dehrmann 5y ago
We also have a healthcare cost crisis. It wouldn't just be masks, it would be literally everything the hospital buys, and it would "tie their hands from getting the best price for patients" (I guarantee you a Republican would use a similar line in a campaign if that proposal went through.

iratewizard 5y ago

There are a number of contributing factors. The lack of manufacturing in the US, which you can blame on bean counters wanting to utilize Chinese slave labor. A tax system that prefers the lower wage workers be either on the dole, work illegally, or work 3 gig-based jobs. A kafkaesque government contracting system dreamed up and continually patched by government workers. The same government workers that would work private sector if they were given a chance. But, they often can't because a lack of experience, aptitude or drive.

xapata 5y ago
Slave labor? Surely the ratio of Chinese laborers who feel enslaved is low enough that it's inappropriate to describe Chinese labor on the whole as slave labor.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Some are literally slaves. Many are nearly so. Giving people a thin veneer of token but not real freedom and token but not fair salary or decent working conditions doesn't absolve you of abuse. Raise people in an environment where people learn that how they are being treated is right and make everyone fear dissent and you just won't hear about many peoples feelings from the other side of the world. Obfuscation is the name of the game in the 21st century, make absolute things grey areas, and add layers of abstraction to the extent that you can't really tell what's being done or whose fault it is so that the same kinds of exploitation can keep going on and it's not so easy to be opposed to it because finding the target is just hard.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    Hey, now I understand people who insult people by saying they have savior complex! It’s all about thinking you have agency and other people don’t. > Many are nearly so. Giving people a thin veneer of token but not real freedom and token but not fair salary or decent working conditions doesn't absolve you of abuse. “Real freedom”? “Fair salary”? “Decent working conditions”? What makes you think Chinese people can’t make their own choices? They’ve been leaving the countryside nonstop for 70 years. The pay for unskilled labor has been going up pretty much nonstop since Deng opened up. China has a lot bad about it but I doubt you would be pretending Thai people are unthinking automatons and they’re about as rich as Chinese. > Raise people in an environment where people learn that how they are being treated is right and make everyone fear dissent and you just won't hear about many peoples feelings from the other side of the world. Indeed. You could make children sit down, shut up and do as they’re told all day five days a week if you just told people it was normal. You could invade and bomb other countries with impunity. You could support other countries in intervening in civil wars to keep them going without end. Good thing we’re free. Good thing we right thinking people would never do anything like that.

encryptluks2 5y ago

Part of the issue is that American businesses are not always better. So a requirement of purchasing subpar overpriced products just because they're American-made doesn't help anyone. They need to find ways to create innovative manufacturing in America.

freeopinion 5y ago
Simple naive economics suggests otherwise. If a 10% domestic requirement keeps demand artificially high, competition will enter the market. New factories, etc. will spring up to get a piece of the fat. They will compete on price, quality, etc.--all the usual points of competition. People will get creative to get their piece of that pie. (Of course some of the creativity will be figuring out ways to subcontract it to China and still count as American.)
- svnt 5y ago
  I mean you got the naive economics part right. These kinds of contracts are selected based on relationships, not product quality or even business acumen. In your mind the government conducts regular technical product evaluations of every small business that attempts to make masks at scale? That isn’t reality.
  - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
    They are saying each individual hospital would have to choose a domestic manufacturer for atleast part of their supply. This would cause more domestic manufacturers to start up and compete for each hospitals business. The rule would affect the hospitals directly, not the mask makers.
gizmo686 5y ago
At a minimum it is a jobs program, and so can be viewed as part of the welfare state (a lot of government spending falls, at least partially, into this category). Perhaps more importantly, it provides a national strategic interest that is not easily captured through economic analysis. When times are good and international trade happens smoothly this is not important, but when the international market breaks down for some reason, having domestic production gives our government more options in how to respond. We saw this with covid, when every nation was scrambling critical resources to deal with the public health emergency. We see this now with Russia, who is regretting how dependent they on foreign trade; and in Europe who are regretting how dependent they are on Russian energy.

jjulius 5y ago

>2 years in and we aren't producing even Covid tests? It's an error to assume that there are absolutely no COVID tests made in the US simply because the small handful you received wasn't. For instance, the popular over-the-counter at-home test manufactured by Abbott is made in the US, except for swabs (mix of Thailand and US) due to supply/demand issues. https://www.globalpointofcare.abbott/en/product-details/binaxnow-covid-19-antigen-self-test-us.html https://www.globalpointofcare.abbott/en/product-details/bina...

jacobolus 5y ago
Abbott sells their Binax test in the US for like 5x the price they sell the same test for in Europe, because the FDA was slow to approve other brands of rapid tests and used questionable criteria,† so they had substantial monopoly pricing power while other vendors’ tests were restricted. If the only way US test production can compete is via predatory price gouging, that’s hardly a sign of health. †: The criterion was performance vs. PCR test, even though PCR and antigen tests measure different things, so that the vendors who slipped through the regulation were those who best gamed the test studies, while various other vendors with tests that perform nearly identically in practice failed FDA study criterion. The FDA refused to accept a performance comparison of new antigen tests vs. already approved antigen tests.
hatware 5y ago
> It's an error to assume that there are absolutely no COVID tests made in the US simply because the small handful you received wasn't. It's an error to imply they were making this assumption in the first place. I, too, am baffled that two years into a pandemic, any tests are coming from China. Didn't the whole thing _start_ there?
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Why would one not want to get tests for a disease from the place where the disease started?
  - hatware 5y ago

landemva 5y ago

USA can restrict import of medical devices and already makes it broadly illegal to import medical drugs. https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/it-legal-me-personally-import-drugs https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/it-legal-me-persona... (I'm not advocating for these restrictions.)

karmasimida 5y ago

The manufacturing cost in US is too high, but the productivity isn't proportionally higher. Regulations and labor protection is good for workers, but it will increase cost and if those manufacturers have choice they will source their suppliers elsewhere. Other comments also mentioned, that made in US isn't really a hallmark of quality across the board, if the consumers are expected to pay 2x-3x more, then it better has something extraordinary to offer, I don't think mask had that much differentiation

bitcharmer 5y ago
I don't think it's due to manufacturing costs. Just look at how much insulin costs to make and the price it's sold at in the US.
- onion2k 5y ago
  This is how companies think: If you can make something in the US for $5 and sell it for $300 you make $295 profit. If you can make it in China and ship it to the US for $4 you make $296 profit. Therefore its better to make it in China. They disregard literally every other benefit.
  - q-big 5y ago
    What you give as an example is a product with insanely high margins. Here, it indeed makes sense to produce it in your home country, because it won't make a huge difference. Most products on a market have slim margins and here such production costs make a huge difference in profit if the buyer is not willing to pay much more for products (partially) produced in the home country.
- karmasimida 5y ago
  3M N95 masks are 1.9 dollars each, while the Chinese ones KN95 are 0.4 each, korea made kf94 masks are between 0.5 - 0.8. Unless 3M masks have some magic in itself (like make me immune to covid), the pricing doesn't seem very appetizing I think it is pretty self explanatory.

ch4s3 5y ago

The FDA and CDC made it illegal for US hospitals, companies, and universities to produce COVID tests until after the CDC effort to produce them had already failed twice. By then there was a booming business in China and South Korea making tests. We only knew about the outbreak in Seattle because some brave scientists broke the law and ran their own tests. I would also add, as other people have mentioned, that domestic manufacturing requirements are at best over priced jobs programs through the back door.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

WalterBright 5y ago

> Why can't the US government mandate hospitals need to purchase a percentage of their supplies from US manufacturers Off the top of my head: 1. what if US manufacturers can't supply them in sufficient quantity 2. what if US manufacturers' delivery dates are too far in the future 3. what if US manufacturers' product does not meet standard 4. what exactly is a US manufacturer anyway, in a world with a global supply chain and complex ownership structures? 5. what if there's only one US manufacturer, and so can charge monopoly prices?