Red Cross facing severe blood shortage
Red Cross facing severe blood shortage
The American Red Cross sounded the alarm Sunday over a severe blood shortage facing the U.S. as the number of donors dropped to the lowest levels in two decades. The Red Cross said in an anno…
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.
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.
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.
Ransomed? I hadn't heard about this so I checked and found that places like Red Cross sell the blood for roughly $250 per unit to hospitals in the US, which seems...perfectly reasonable within the parameters of our healthcare system. There are operational costs to collecting blood that have to be funded somehow.
The cost to patients charged by healthcare providers is unrelated, and this does not apply to for-profit plasma centers, which...yeah, don't do that.
The cost to patients charged by healthcare providers is unrelated
The next link in the donation delivery chain is unrelated? Agree to disagree.
Capitalist Trojan horse Charter schools might be "non-profit" but they hire publically traded, for profit charter management companies. It's all a capitalist profit grift by design. Pretty but fake front-end hiding a greed driven backend.
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.
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.
Maybe if our healthcare industry wasn't designed to profit capitalists off death and suffering, there would be no such reservations.
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.
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.
I recently needed a blood transfusion. The bill was $7,300. I paid $650 after insurance covered/negotiated the rest.
Just sharing a data point.
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.
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They are a non-profit organization. They aren't making money off of your blood, the money allows them to provide relief and services.