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by joshvm
2289 days ago
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Nobody has mentioned how much an entire ventilator costs. Best I can find is between $5-50k usd. For example a Puritan Bennett 980 quoted as around $50k (by the manufacturer) with a $2k a year service contract. https://www.medtronic.com/covidien/en-gb/products/mechanical... So why is a valve $10k? Note that a replacement battery for the above ventilator costs < $1k. Is the valve a disposable part (at 20% cost of the whole unit?) Is it some special valve that is the core IP (that other medical valves can't replace?) Is it made from some special material? Do they have to make each one from scratch? Does individual certification cost a fortune (and maybe this is a fixed cost regardless of what you're testing)? How much does a similar replacement valve cost for a similar ventilator? Bear in mind that $10k implies a $3k cost to the company, at a typical hardware engineering markup. I don't think we can handwave "Rnd" or some mystical "compliance" cost without knowing more details. Seems like a valve for anaesthesiology is a Class II medical device, which may be a start? https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR... |
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I'm guessing the valves are single-use (due to contamination), so the cost is passed along to the customer. They can't charge every customer for a battery (I mean, they could prorate it, but that's not how medical billing works). The hospital doesn't care what a valve costs if they're passing-along 100% of the cost to you.