• PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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      8 months ago

      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.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You think paying donorsproviders would reduce the number of people willing to givesell blood?

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          8 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.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      8 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.