this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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106
Red Cross facing severe blood shortage (thehill.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
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[–] [email protected] 45 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

The capitalist ransoming is done by the hospital.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The next link in the donation delivery chain is unrelated? Agree to disagree.

Forgive me, but this is misguidedly reductive. No healthcare is provided in the US, by providers, without being subjected to capitalist exploitation. If I understand your thought process, a collective of the best pharmaceutical scientists in the world could create a completely non-profit pharmaceutical NGO, design and manufacture life-saving drugs, and give them away to hospitals (or sell them at-cost). But so long as hospitals then charge profit rates for those drugs, it would be ethically indefensible to financially support the NGO?

Is that not holding patients hostage in an impotent effort to force change in the broader healthcare industry? I donate to my local non-profit blood center, who (assuming they're similar to ARC) sells my blood to local hospitals at-cost, and then my blood is used to save a patient in need. The patient will then be responsible for paying the hospital exorbitant sums for my blood (from which the blood center doesn't benefit) and all the other services it provides, but what's the alternative?

Edit: would it make a difference if the blood center didn't charge hospitals for the blood, even though the hospital will still charge patients?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It would be different if my DONATION to a NON-PROFIT was distributed for the cost of retrieval, packaging, and delivery into the patient's IV at cost, as it is a DONATION. No one forces for profit hospitals to jack up the price of the donated blood for private profit, they choose to out of greed. They should be FORCED not to by law.

No healthcare is provided in the US, by providers, without being subjected to capitalist exploitation

Agreed, and I'm forced to participate in capitalist exploitation to subsist in this greedy fucking place at every turn, but I won't be a willing part of their schemes and scams if I am not forced to to survive.

Capitalists see charity and good will as just another vector for their grift. Thats why I donate directly to their victims on street corners now. If they do use it on drugs as so many warn, good, I hope that provides momentary solace for what we their fellow citizens have done to them in the name of "fuck you I got mine."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Seriously, I get it. It's fucking infuriating, but again...what's the alternative? Is there some way in which this moral rigidity is not holding patients hostage in an impotent effort to force change in a broader healthcare industry?

There are alternative and more effective methods of effecting change that don't involve sacrificing life or well-being. I implore anyone who's rightfully disgusted by this reality to grit your teeth and help people however you can, and direct your ire where it's best deserved.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You do realize that gritting our teeth and helping others through the intentional hostage situation of "but you gotta pay the shareholders first to be allowed to do it" is just further prolonging and further entrenching this sick system?

At some point, if the people don't say enough, let it all come crashing down, and rebuild a more equitable system, then our children and our children's children will be even more exploited, more commodified, and more dehumanized.

I'm being the change I want to see in the world by saying e-fucking-nough, you want to squeeze those sick people for their last nickel, do it yourself. My blood won't be your leverage.

This greed disease can cause pain in perpetuity, generationally, or we can let it collapse and endure the pain of reconstruction. There's gonna be a lot of pain, suffering, and unnecessary death either way. But only one has genuine hope in the long term. Nothing will make our current economy more equitable over time. It's going the other way by design. It is working as intended.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

At some point, if the people don’t say enough, let it all come crashing down, and rebuild a more equitable system

Who's organizing this? Your withdrawal isn't part of some collective movement, it is solitary and impotent. It is harmful. There's no board room hosting the league of evil medical barons, no agenda item about how Allonzee stopped donating blood so they'd better start taking things seriously. You're not changing anything, and squeezing sick people isn't a necessary step in effecting change anyway.

There's no "we" and there's no collapsing. These systems persist despite your personal rebellion, because they're really good at persisting until faced with overwhelming collective action. Until then, fucking help people.

Sorry friend, it's not really about you. But a lot of good people who care about inequity have let their pride convince them that systems will implode if they personally choose to stop participating in them. That's not how it works. The only people feeling any hurt are the innocents in your own communities.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

"You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs. They have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting. They know what's good for them."

-George Carlin, from an episode of Politically Incorrect

I'm more than aware we are doomed and we will only continue to live further in service to them until they succeed in destroying the very air we all breath. I can only control myself, not the millions of people that continue to serve them against their own interests. I do what I consider right without hope or expectation of reward in a fully compromised and unethical society.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Based on this conversation, what you consider right has a lot more in common with pride and laziness than it does with moral integrity. You say a lot of revolutionary words about dismantling power structures before finally admitting you're just shrugging your shoulders in your own little corner.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I can't dismantle them by myself. I can't fight the storm by myself.

That doesn't mean im going to get a sledgehammer and start helping the storm knock over houses.

Have a good one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

You too, thanks for the interesting conversation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Don't they just sell most of what's donated?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

How else am I getting that sweet insulated tote back?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago

You're welcome to establish a blood bank operation funded solely on monetary donations, let us know how that goes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You think paying ~~donors~~providers would reduce the number of people willing to ~~give~~sell blood?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, that is exactly what you are doing. Still waiting on you to demonstrate your initial claim that paying donors would endanger the blood supply.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

From the article:

The organization added there was a 7,000-unit shortfall in blood donations between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day alone.

One of the most distressing situations for a doctor is to have a hospital full of patients and an empty refrigerator without any blood products,” Pampee Young, chief medical officer of the Red Cross, said in a statement.

I leave you with two options:

  1. Demonstrate that your claimed threat to the blood supply is more dangerous to patients than a shortage of 7000 units per week; or,

  2. Drop this claimed threat as an argument against paying donors.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I am a blood donor and a future organ donor. More than anything I am frustrated that someone should have to even be billed for $7,300 for something I gave to them for free. Our health system is rigged against the people it claims to benefit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It is frustrating and needs to be better regulated, but thank you for being a donor.

As someone with chronic anemia, it's very disheartening to see all of these people say that they will not donate because their donation gets sold. They would rather people like me just die than have capitalism get involved with their donation?

I'd rather pay than not get the blood, thank you very much. The solution is legislation, not to simply stop donating.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

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.