Hunt for medical supplies creates marketplace of desperation

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Shady middlemen, phantom shipments, prices soaring by the hour, goods flown in on a private plane.

What sounds like an organized-crime thriller is now the new reality for governors desperately trying to find the medical equipment their states need in the throes of a pandemic. With the federal stockpile dwindling fast, and the Trump administration limiting access to what’s left, state leaders are going to extraordinary measures on their own to secure faces masks, ventilators, gloves and other equipment essential to fighting the outbreak.

They’ve ventured into a global market-place one governor described as the “wild, wild, West,” only to compete against each other and their own federal government. They’ve watched the price of a ventilators double and masks go for 10 times their original price. They’ve turned to rich friends and businesses for help. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker enlisted NFL owner Robert Kraft to send the Patriots team plane to China to retrieve over a million masks.

In New York, an epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., Gov. Andrew Cuomo has looked closer to home to secure ventilators, issuing an order that forces even private hospitals to redistribute ventilators to the hospitals most in need.

“Let them sue me,” Cuomo said.

All this has led many governors to call on the federal government to centralize purchases. But President Donald Trump has not appeared inclined to intervene in the private market. And the White House made clear this week that Trump views the federal stockpile as a “backup” for the states.

“It is the greatest frustration,” said Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who heads the National Governors Association. “We have states out competing on the open markets with totally uneven distribution of these things, and now the...