As the coronavirus pandemic threatened to overwhelm Chinese hospitals last year, Chinese resellers appear to have colluded to inflate the prices of ventilators and other essential medical equipment from multinational companies including Siemens, GE and Philips, according to a review of recent public records on the sale of medical equipment in China.
Hospitals purchased high-value MRIs, CT scanners, ultrasound machines, and other equipment– all vital for diagnosing and researching the novel coronavirus–in some cases paying millions of dollars above fair market prices. Such inflated prices typically include a cushion for bribery of hospital officials and others along the purchasing chain, according to court cases and corruption experts.
One Chinese hospital paid a reseller $5.16 million for a GE Signa Pioneer MRI scanner, while another Chinese hospital paid just $2.56 million for the same machine. A Siemens CT scanner sold for $3.24 million at one Chinese hospital, when the top-of-the-line Siemens model carries a market price of $1.95 million.
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This story was provided to the Associated Press by 100Reporters, a nonprofit news organization based in Washington, D.C.