Planet money did a great segment on this that I will paraphrase.....Toilet paper a product in which demand almost never changes...all year, its the same. People dont buy more at Christmas, or summer, whatever...The only thing that changes slowly over time is the number of people in the country. if you are a toilet paper manufacturer, you probably work really hard to figure out how to keep the supply very very steady. You build your supply chain in this way....its not an industry that was built for a sudden spike when millions of blithering idiots run out and buy 5 years worth.
In a statement Sunday night, after the article was published, Medtronic said, “The prototype ventilator, developed by Newport Medical, would not have been able to meet the specifications required by the government, nor at the price required.” Medtronic said that one problem was that the machine was not going to be usable with newborns.
As and ME who spent 10 years doing product development....when someone says we can make X and for only $3000....there are many many details that need to follow. This article is lacking alot of detail. But corporations want to make money and boost their stock price, we all know that much. But at the end of the day, the stockpile was still only going to be ~10-20,000....still way way short...and the difference in cost between $3000 and 10,000 is the least of the problem right now.