Issues: Identify and explain t

Economic issues concerning how ventilators should be allocatedduring the global health pandemic are that because of supplyconstraints, hospitals are finding it difficult to procure theseventilators at a cheap cost, which is leading to ultimately thegovernment or citizens bearing a severe bill which could lead tosevere distress in terms of standard of living as citizens have tospent a lot more than they should, especially during thepandemic.

The more the price of ventilators and supply power, more is thethreat of economic distress as bargaining power of suppliers tendsto increase, which leads to discrimination and misallocation ofresources. States procuring from the same vendors leads to hugemarkup in terms of ventilator prices and ultimately shortage, withrising cases. As greater the shortage, more is the price, coupledwith monopoly power of suppliers. In terms of economic distress, itis getting translated to huge costs for states and the government,increasing the fiscal deficit further.

Now ethical issues concerning this allocation are that thescarce ventilators are only being used for high risk patients andthose who could be saved in order to allocate these ventilatorsefficiently, which is ethically wrong as everyone should be given achance to survive. Another ethical issue is that suppliers ofventilators are purposely creating a monopoly in order to takeadvantage of increase in demand, this is leading to high deathrates as access is not efficient.

There could be an argument raised against such economic andethical issues such as manufacturing of ventilators requirescertain expertise and the high markup is justified as there is hugedemand. But the increase in prices shouldn’t be at the cost ofhuman lives being lost, there should be some sort of price ceilingwhich could help prevent citizens being discriminated upon and somesolutions found in order to address supply shortages as this is apublic health crisis and human lives cannot be lost because thehospital or the state didn’t have the infrastructure in place, allthe countries should come together in order to address this issueso that long terms solutions are found, and everyone benefits. Itshouldn’t be that a few benefit at the cost of another.