Maybe if our healthcare industry wasn’t designed to profit capitalists off death and suffering, there would be no such shortage.
I say this as someone who used to donate regularly until I learned how my donated blood was then being ransomed for private profit against sick people that need it.
I won’t knowingly support such a system, where genuine charity (not that shit corporations do for tax breaks and marketing, that’s called a transaction) is bastardized and betrayed into serving the profit motive.
You can try cutting out the middle man and donate to a hospital. I know UCSF has their own blood collection, many other hospitals should be the same
The capitalist ransoming is done by the hospital.
Red cross charges $150 a pint to hospitals. Covers overhead and paying staff.
Then the hospital turns around and charges $1,500 for it. A ten fold increase. For nothing.
The system is fucked, yes. But the solution isn’t to stop donating. Doing that reduces supply and exacerbates the exact problems you’re describing.
If you keep giving into the hostage taker’s demands, they’ll just keep taking new hostages, and continue to increase their demands over time.
Forever.
Blood transfusions cost a patient $1k-$4k and none of that money is given back to a donor. If they want people to donate, they need to either make transfusions cheap, or pay the donors.
Do you think it is Red Cross that is charging for transfusions?
There’s plenty of reasons to dislike the ARC, but this isn’t one of them.
Hell, if you’d stopped to think for half a second you’d realize all that will do is increase patient costs and endanger the blood supply.
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What is the relevant difference between unpaid whole blood donation and paid plasma donation?
I would argue that the price of blood is inflated due to low supply. Increasing the supply by paying blood donors could very well reduce the unit price of blood, and thus patient costs.
I reject your insinuation that paying people for donating blood poses a threat to the blood supply. The risks to human life posed by an insufficient blood supply are far greater than the risks arising from compensating donors.
Your uninformed opinion on proven medical fact is irrelevant, especially when you don’t even know that paid plasma isn’t directly transfused into patients, unlike actual donated plasma, and you think there’s supply and demand in action for fucking blood transfusions.
Paid plasma is used for the manufacture of various products, anything from makeup to clotting factors. Which, as it happens, are notable for being an increased infection risk over directly transfused blood because their sources can’t be trusted to tell the truth about their risk factors.
Quantify the risk, please.
Blood can only be donated every 8 weeks, plasma twice a week. After donating blood, you can’t donate plasma for 8 weeks.
The hypothetical “untrustworthy” plasma donors you’re talking about are earning about $640 in 8 weeks. I don’t see them switching to whole blood donation for $50 or $100 compensation. I’m not seeing how the risk to the blood supply is going to increase at all, let alone significantly enough to exceed the risk of critical shortages in the blood supply.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Shifting-of-the-Burden-of-Proof
Nice try, but no.
Defend your claim that established practice is safe to change. Defend your assertion that the only solution is to open up paid transfusions because the donations are down, compared to efforts to increase those donations instead.
Hell, if you’d stopped to think for half a second you’d realize all that will do is increase patient costs and endanger the blood supply.
Still waiting on you to quantify that risk. This is the third time I’ve asked you to support your initial assertion.
You think paying
donorsproviders would reduce the number of people willing togivesell blood?No. I think you’d rapidly find yourself in a situation like in West Africa, where the blood sellers typically have 3x the rate of having a blood born illness than the general population.
There is one thing countries that refuse paid transfusables have in common, and that is a near-zero infection risk from blood transfusion. Something that is not true for countries that accept paid “donors.”
And the dumbest thing of it all is it still wouldn’t reduce costs. It would increase them for patients, so why the hell do it at all?
The problem is not that “donors” aren’t getting a cut. The problem is the boomers are the last generation that got massive public awareness campaigns about the importance of donating blood, and they’re aging out of the health requirements or just, you know, dying.
Does West Africa collect plasma as well as whole blood?
West Africa has an extraordinarily low donation rate, even with payment. I don’t accept that they are a reasonable analog to the US.
There is one thing countries that refuse paid transfusables have in common, and that is a near-zero infection risk from blood transfusion. Something that is not true for countries that accept paid “donors.”
Which is the bigger danger to patients, the risk of infection from paid donors, or the risks posed by the 7000-unit per week shortage the Red Cross is claiming?
The very least they could do would be to place a dollar value on the blood, and allow you to claim that value as a charitable donation, reducing your income tax burden.
Don’t they just sell most of what’s donated?
How else am I getting that sweet insulated tote back?
You’re welcome to establish a blood bank operation funded solely on monetary donations, let us know how that goes.
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