this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Interesting
Personally I’m a bit tangential to this, if I’m donating I’d expect the blood to go to places that need it without cost to them.
If they’re selling it, I want a fair shake too but I’d be more willing to donate to someone who would be giving it to the hospitals in need free of charge.
I’m sure there are costs associated but non-profits exist, no? Maybe there’s something I’m unaware of with how these work
Donations have to cover the costs of day operations. They need to be pay their employees, purchase supplies, money towards the buildings and/or vehicles they use, etc. I don't know how much hospitals are paying for each donation unit, so I can't speak on that. Blood donation centers might have a hard time operating on just monetary donations they receive. Paying donars for each donation would open the door to shady and ineligible people wanting some quick cash. There are places that pay for plasma, but I don't have experience with them, so I've never looked into how they operate.
My personal experience. I had to pause donating platelets recently due to a medical issue, but I have donated regularly for the last few years. I've never done it for t-shirts or gifts. I donated because platelets help people. The Red Cross has a feature that will usually tell where your donation went after itvhas been processed. I would always have good day when mine was shipped to a children's hospital. I hope I can start donating again soon.
This is it. People have to stop believing that paying staff is apparently a "waste of funds".
As a specialist in my industry, I don't work at schools and nonprofits, not because I don't want to, but because their pay is usually half of the industry average. It's sad. And you can't "donate your speciality" to these places either. Nobody wants a volunteer specialist.
I’ve looked into plasma, apparently a lot of the world won’t use US plasma because we pay donors for it, it does incentivize bad behavior, and most countries won’t allow plasma donation any more frequently than blood donation. Which is every 8-ish weeks. We can do two donations a week (and it’s incentivized to encourage just that). Some desperate people game the system to do it at multiple places, even resorting to eating various things (like ketchup packets) to trick the blood tests.
But even then these companies sell it for enough (I think it’s used for cancer treatments?) to make enough on the domestic market that even paying for it is highly profitable.
well not just that but also a history of lying about it and continuing to sell blood that they knew was infected...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products
There isn't any nuance, these morons are just wrong.
They just don't realize how expensive of an operation it is, and don't realize how fucked in the head it is for a "leftist" to demand a cut of a non-existent profit margin to help the sick.
I have literally zero doubt that the Red Cross C-level is a corrupt party of failed for-profit executives (namely the CEO and her cronies, look her up), but this idea that it's an immoral act to sell the blood to cover operation costs is...
Laughable. Contemptuous ignorance at its worst.
And it's not like these morons are donating to Blood Assurance or a local bank instead.
Fwiw, about a decade ago I had a conversation with (iirc) a red cross employee who worked with blood banks. They said they make about 350 a pint but it costs about 300 to do all the required testing like HIV/hepatitis screening.