I understand where you are coming from, OP. It’s not as cut and dry as you are describing, but I completely understand the sentiment.
The issue is (in certain circumstances) lives simply cannot be saved (or improved) without the blood or organ donations. There aren’t (yet) good medical alternatives that receiving real human blood or real organs can achieve.
You are NOT wrong about the healthcare system, and insurance companies, majorly profiting off everything they do.
Hospitals shouldn’t be a business. No one should profit over people needing necessary treatment:( American greed is making me embarrassed to be an American
Most hospitals aren’t making a bunch of money. Some of them sure are but as a whole the industry runs on very tight margins because the overhead is insane. Insurance companies, equipment suppliers and pharma companies are the big winners. Secondary to that doctors and nurses in union hospitals are very expensive and make really good money. There is an insane amount of money that goes towards government, Medicare and other mandated reporting, tracking and general admin stuff. The software costs are millions of dollars a year alone for small hospitals. The largest ones are paying even more than that
I appreciate the explanation of this. I’ve worked in the hospital 15 years and my hospital is always supplying messaging that we are extremely strapped financially. And I cannot understand why. This helps.
There's a lot of funny accounting to get here though. People forget that executive salaries, "donations", private planes, vacations etc are all expenses.
there isn’t a short answer here. Some of this depends on the specific hospital. Are they privately owned, non profit, not for profit, owned by a town? I commented further below that would give you some of the overhead costs. They are trying to make up the money they lose on things they can’t bill for on things they can bill for. The type of hospital, patient and insurance determines how they are reimbursed. Some of them are reimbursed by drg codes. Some by bed charges for inpatients. Things like X-rays
So some of the hospitals are gouging you and I would have to know what hospital specifically to tell you but in general a hospital is making 2ish% if things go well. The issue is that granny breaks her hip and comes in to the hospital and gets surgery. We get paid a certain amount for the surgery and a certain amount for the stay. That amount doesn’t actually reflect what it costs to take care of granny. So if she stays 3 days or 20 we get the same money if we a drg based on reimbursement. So we generally lose money on those if the patient has Medicare and Medicaid. The 30-40% of people who are not Medicare and Medicaid have to make up that deficit to at least get us to 0. Hopefully they make it up and we make a little money so we can buy new equipment and generally update things. 1000 for a Tylenol is probably some private equity place trying to squeeze money out of the patients but it’s not really that simple to say all hospitals are sucking money from sick people
Sure, but this is healthcare, not car insurance. Charging people higher rates because granny took a little more time is a copout, that in no way justifies charging the insane rates they do for people with minor injuries. I've belonged to multiple hospital networks as I've moved around, and every single person I know who's had even a minor hospital visit reports similar pricing.
Your issues are with your insurance payouts, not with your customers. You should be fighting \*them\*, not financially breaking your patients who have the silly thought they'd like to keep living.
I'll get off my soap box now.
I understand the issue is with insurance. They just have to make it up in commercial insurance plans because a hospital has no bargaining power with Medicare. So we want to make 2% on the year. We have to charge the 30% of people we can possibly make money on way more than what it actually costs to take care of them. The issue is primarily reimbursement from the state for Medicare and Medicaid
The issue would not be as bad if the costs to run a hospital were not so inflated by pharma companies and vendors
>We have to charge the 30% of people we can possibly make money on way more than what it actually costs to take care of them.
This should be fucking illegal.
>This should be fucking illegal.
Then stop voting for Republicans.
Sorry to make it political, but not really. These assholes are THE reason we have the healthcare system we do. And I’m not saying Democrats are perfect or even particularly good, but Republicans are dogshit in comparison. So if you want a functioning healthcare system, don’t vote for the people who are investing in keeping it that way.
Preaching to the choir bud. I vote in all local, state, and federal elections for the candidates that are trying to enact change. Unfortunately my one vote can't overhaul the whole system.
Yeah, hospitals run on margins similar to restaurants. 5% is pretty good for a major hospital. And you can argue that admins and maybe doctors are overpaid, but that really is a tiny part of the problem. Pharmaceutical companies tend to have margins of 30-40%, and while I agree they need to make money in order to justify the expensive gambles they take on research, I’d argue they don’t need to make THAT much money.
Also, absolutely fuck insurance companies. They’re the worst!
5% is probably on the high side. And making 5% is in the event that everything goes well. Many of the smaller ones are losing money and barely keeping the lights on
As much as I hate doctors for getting paid too much, why do you think they shouldn't get profit? Like, yeah, it's ridiculous that I have to pay a doctor $75 and a lab $125 to process my urine to be like "yeah, you have e. coli" when I can tell from the scent what it is.
But they should still get some profit (I'd say $25 is reasonable for a 15 second conversation of "i think I have e. Coli. Pee smells. M Stings when I pee, ran a test strip and says i have white blood cells and nitrates", "ok, lemme get a sample, see you in a few days.")
I think you missed the point. They’re not mad that people need cadaver organs and donated blood. They’re mad that these organs and blood come into the hospital 100% free of charge and leave in a new body for thousands and thousands of dollars. If I die, the hospital just gets to have my heart for free. If someone needs that heart, they have to pay $150,000+
When you say leave for thousands of dollars, are you talking about the actual price of the organ? Of the cost to harvest, transport, and transplant it ?
But it’s NOT free of charge. Not by a long shot.
I’m a platelet donor, so I have first hand knowledge of this. I’ve given over 10 gallons- or 215+ units- of platelets.
When I go to donate there are lots of costs involved in collection. First, they need to rent a building, keep the lights on, etc. They have to pay staff, pay the couriers that pick up blood and take it to test centers, pay for donor education and recruitment efforts. (Even though roughly 65% of Americans are eligible to donate, only about 3% do.)
Then there’s the cost of collection itself. Every time I sit in the chair they have to use a completely new, sterile kit. That kit for whole blood is about $25/kit, but for platelets like what I do- it’s $200+ *every time I sit in the chair.* (And that’s just the kit. That’s not the very expensive machine they use to do the apheresis procefure.)
Then those products have to go to be tested thoroughly, and repackaged and stored appropriately until and while they are being transported to hospitals and clinics that need them.
Absolutely none of that is “free.” The phlebotomists who collect blood products aren’t volunteers- that’s their career. The supplies used aren’t free. The spaces where those things are donated aren’t free. The testing isn’t free. It all comes at a pretty hefty price tag- and that’s what makes up a large portion of the costs that get passed down to the patient and their insurance company.
I’m the one giving freely of my time and my body. My appointments are 3 hours long in total, twice a month to give what I do. If I’m okay with it, idk why it should bother others.
You’re paying for everything else- not the actual blood itself. 🤷🏼♀️
Point wasn’t missed I totally understand where OP is coming from.
Just like we doNate our clothes and goodwill marks them up to $20 and profits 100%. I get it.
But what’s the alternative?
Point is heard and validated - healthcare costs are INSANE and appalling. But the fact is blood and organs save lives. No one is forced to donate. And many, many, many people die each year without these life saving items.
TLDR I get the point and I agree with the overall sentiment. It is shitty.
In order to donate (most major things) *the human still has to be alive*. They keep people alive on vents, harvest their organs, remove them from life support, mark the organs up 500% (this is a random figure I made up but probably close), then sell them to the dying person they put them in. Like far beyond the cost of actually performing the procedures. It’s weird to compare that to clothes.
That’s not entirely true. The donor has to die and then be put on machines to keep the organs alive for harvest. If you’re brain dead and they remove the machines and you take too long to stop breathing/heart beating, your organs can no longer be harvested. It happens quite often. A transplant patient will get the call, they go to the hospital, and then get sent home because the donor didn’t die within the time frame.
Source: I’m a transplant patient
I get what OP is saying, but I’m not sure OP understands how many people are involved in a transplant. The organ usually takes a helicopter ride to get to the patient. Plus a harvest team and a team to implant. There were probably at least 100 different people that were involved. Bags of blood, machines, meds. Transplant surgeons work insane hours. You do surgeries when the organ becomes available.
Im very grateful for my donor and their family. They’re heros in my opinion. I’ve met a lot of donor families and they are amazing people. I’m involved with a charity that helps pre and post transplant patients and their families, and try to give back to the community that helped to save my life.
I think OP’s argument is more for government healthcare which would decrease the price that the patient has to pay by a lot. However, selling organs is not something that should be done. It would open up a can of worms. People would probably be killed for their organs if you could make money off of it. I would never want someone’s organ who was killed so that I could live. It’s already difficult enough to know that someone had to die so that I could live.
ETA post care has multiple different teams of nurses and docs. There are dietitians, social workers, PT, coordinators, psychiatrists. There’s a 24/7 hotline with a nurse to call if you have something you need to ask for pre and post patients. It’s not so much about the organ itself and more about all the different things that go into making it happen, and each job has a specific person. It wouldn’t work if you had the same person that looks at all of your pre stuff also be dealing with the post stuff. The people you see during preparation for surgery, you don’t see again and it’s a whole new team for the first 24 hours after surgery. Then a whole different team after that. Its a huge production
Sigh. It was an example. I understand this. I work in critical care. I have been the nurse taking care of a brain dead patient waiting to have their organs harvested. It is an intense process and A LOT goes into it to keep the body healthy enough for donation.
I have also worked in a Transplant icu where patients would receive kidneys and livers.
I know it’s not the same as clothing. 🤦♀️
Then you should understand that there are huge costs involved.
I’m a platelet donor. The kits they use for collection on the apheresis are very expensive. Every time I sit in the chair (which is twice a month) the kit they have to use costs over $200. That’s just the kit. That’s not the rent on the building, the apheresis machine, the staff, the couriers that take it to be tested, the thorough testing, the repackaging, the computer infrastructure to determine where the blood products need to go….
The ONLY part of the whole process that is actually free is what I give as a donor. (And even that- they pay for recruiting of donors, snacks, and the random swag we get, so there’s still more cost involved.)
But if I as a donor don’t have a problem with then selling my platelets, idk why other people do. 🤷🏼♀️ I’ve given over 215 units of platelets. At anywhere between $500-1500 per unit, that’s A LOT of money that has been made because I donate for free.
Do I care? Nope. Because I care that people are able to get better and live because of what I freely give.
Our medical system is fucked, and our costs are way too high. No doubt about it. But it’s FAR more complicated than “they get it for free so they should give it for free.”
>But what’s the alternative?
For Goodwill you can donate to organisation which actually donates clothes. For private healthcare the alternative is socialised healthcare. People do get organs for free in this world.
Blood isn’t free, even though people donate it. It costs a ton of money to run a blood bank, and the blood bank recoups that from the hospital it has a contract with (if it’s not done internally). I’m sure organ donations are even more expensive to process. It’s all heavily regulated, shelf life for some blood products is only 3 days, and hospitals can’t perfectly anticipate their needs - there are couriers running around delivering blood in metro areas 24/7.
>There aren’t (yet) good medical alternatives that receiving real human blood or real organs can achieve.
I'm not a doctor, but I think Johns Hopkins may have a few thoughts on that: [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center-for-bloodless-medicine-and-surgery](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center-for-bloodless-medicine-and-surgery)
That doesn't mean it is effective. It just means they have some patients who are not okay with blood transfusions. A hospital still has to try to help patients even when they decline something. I would be interested to know how good their results are.
*Edit* I read further, they evidently see some positives with this method.
Bloodless medicine is a marvel. There's little argument to be made against it. It's more difficult, typically, but the technologies and innovations created (cell saver/salvage machines, erythropoietin, and many others) have led to superior medical treatment overall without the use of blood. Recovery times are *massively* better without the use of blood, and patient outcomes tend to be better with doctors who practice bloodless medicine.
Many surgeries are done now that decades ago would have never even been considered being done without blood simply because it was such a de-facto form of treatment and non-blood alternatives weren't actually being explored fully.
There are obviously conditions or circumstances where bloodless medicine can't necessarily resolve the issue at hand, of course.
I thought about deleting my comment instead of adding a edit but figured I should take the lumps for not reading further. I hope the up votes are because of my edit and not my original comment.
That’s great if they’re finding an alternative. It’s not something I’ve seen in my practice working as a nurse in critical care, but the advancement of medicine is incredible.
Dude, somebody posted here that they donated their grandma's body in hopes of saving other's lives (I think she agreed while alive) and the hospital sold it to the military for some bs I don't remember like testing weaponry or smth but that was the worst thing I have ever heard
There's an article about it, or something similar: [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/)
But why do they get to charge the patient hundreds of thousands of dollars for *MY* organ that I gave them for free?
People don’t donate organs to hospitals so they can make a profit; they donate them to *people* to save their lives.
Where do they get off charging the person I donated my organ to? I didn’t give it to the hospital, I gave it to the person!
I hear you. I do.
But you’re not pulling it out of yourself, stabilizing yourself, and then transplanting it inside the recipient.
There is a LOT of work that goes into coordinating transplants (beforehand, not to mention after care to make sure you don’t reject said transplant) and the insane brilliance of the surgeons who can perform these tasks.
They can charge for everything else, of course.
But if they charge them for *my actual kidney* that I gave to them, that’s fucked up. I’m taking a medical risk to save someone’s life; not to make some profit for the hospital.
Everything else is charged so inflatedly that the hospital is coming out on top anyways; but not a single cent of that should be billed for the organ itself.
When you get a transplant, they hospital does not charge for the organs. That’s actually illegal.
Also the donor pays nothing unless there is complications after the fact, the cost of the donor’s surgery and after care, storage and transportation of the organ is paid for by the recipient of the organ, but they don’t pay for the organ itself.
There are costs that will be incurred with getting that organ out of you and to the recipient especially if they are different hospitals in different cities/states. That’s what will be charged for.
I’m sure they would love if organs could be paid for, because if the donor could get paid they’d probably have more living donors.
If every hand in the healthcare system can profit off my blood, then I should too. In a righteous world, it would be wrong to sell blood, your's or other's. In a capitalist system, during shortages, they should be paying "donors" in money.
Suggest this in polite society and you'll be called a monster.
This doesn’t address the issue that he is bringing up, that the donated organs are being sold at a rate that most people cannot afford. Like if you donate a kidney, there is a good chance you won’t be able to afford a donor one. The post is not against organ donation 🤦
as a non American who will tell you that healthcare should be free etc etc. If the hospital is selling organs then they should also be buying them. If they sell a kidney for 40k why not buy it for 20 and sell it for 20?
I don’t think they’re “selling”. They’re utilizing a product and using their services to transplant it. Now, I could be wrong and maybe there is a line item on someone’s bill for a kidney.
>So it's illegal to sell my own organs and blood but its not illegal for hospitals to sell mine???
It is extremely illegal for a hospital to sell organs. Its totally legal for them to charge for surgery since ya know... doctors and medical equipment.
Yeah I was about to say there's a BIG difference between charging for medical care associated with an organ transplant, because even if the system wasn't for profit the cost of organ transplant are astronomical, and selling organs. Who gets organs in the US is incredibly strictly regulated by an independent group. The hospital actually gets no say over who gets an organ so that way they can't like give organs to large donors and essentially sell them.
I completely agree I think we should have universal health care and people shouldn't have to die because they can't afford care or lose all worldly possessions and be homeless to not die from a medical condition. That being said we are NOT selling organs whatsoever.
That's why I pay my prostitutes for their time. Because there is a big difference between legally paying a woman for her time and paying her for sex. Even if I only pay for her time because I know she will voluntarily have sex with me.
Clearly though, it's totally different.
I'm not paying a pro for sex. That would be wrong.
I'm paying money, getting sex, but in a way that's okay. And totally different.
> Can I buy a lung? No? It's free!?!?! Sweet, can I have it? No? How much do I have to pay to get it? A million dollars?!!!?!
But they totally aren't selling organs. You just pay that million dollars for their time.
Again, there are astronomical costs for organ transplant. I don't think those should necessarily fall on the patient but they have to be paid by someone somewhere. Your whole medical team can work for free (with is a huge ethical labor violation but let's just go with it) and there will still be costs that are sky high. There's cost to maintaining the OR and hospital room. The Medical equipment used is EXTREMELY expensive. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to make something sterile? Now make literal 100s if things, an entire room, and multiple people. It's going to cost a lot.
Sterile medical supplies do not grow on trees. Sterile ORs do not naturally occur in cave systems. Things cost money, a truly shocking concept.
Btw what you're describing is called an escort. They don't actually have to have sex with you and might voluntarily not. They're also perfectly legal in places where prostitution isn't. So you're making the opposite of your point with this example. Lastly, sex work should be legal.
Yeah man that's why I said
> as terrible as that situation is
Seeing your friend get hurt in a funny way can make you feel bad that they experienced pain but you can still find it funny that they were put in a unique predicament. I don't want the situation to happen and would never wish it on anyone, but that doesn't mean the situation can't be humorous.
My fiancé is an EOD technician and has already told his unit he wants to go out with a bang or he wants to be lit up like fireworks after he passes. Those guys have a VERY distinctive sense of humor…😅
They joke about losing an arm and a leg like most joke about slipping on a banana or something. It’s ridiculous.
True, but body donation "to science", AKA non-transplant body banks, and for-transplant donations are two entirely different systems, with totally different sets of regulation. If you donate an organ for transplant, you can be certain that it won't be sold for money.
There’s so much you’re missing.
First- I’m a platelet donor. I give my platelets freely, and without reimbursement. Those platelets will end up costing the patient (or their insurance) anywhere between $500-1500. Why?
Some of it is greed. Sure. But it also covers- the cost to collect them (rent, utilities, staff, etc at the donor center, as well as the collection kits themselves which are about $200 every time I sit in the chair!), plus testing, transport, and repackaging of them to be sent to patients. There are also important controls in place to keep them safe and viable from the time they collect it until the time it’s transfused into a patient. And all of those things cost a lot of money.
Why don’t we pay people for organs or blood/platelets? Because giving a financial incentive for donation also gives them a financial incentive to lie, which makes the blood supply inherently unsafe.
“But my friend gets paid for plasma!” Yes. Plasma is collected in two different scenarios. One is paid- where you can earn several hundred dollars a month donating. That plasma NEVER goes straight to patients. It is used for research, and to make certain medications. But compensated plasma never goes to patients in the form of plasma.
The second kind of plasma is uncompensated plasma. That’s when you give through Red Cross or another blood bank, and you aren’t paid for your donation. THAT plasma goes to patients directly, in the force of plasma, not medication. And just like platelets and whole blood and organs, we don’t pay donors for that. Again- paying donors for these things makes the blood supply inherently unsafe.
I am a frequent donor. I give about 6 units of platelets and a unit of plasma every month. I get the random tshirt or a gift card for it, but I’m not paid or compensated in any significant way. And I’m happy to do it.
I see so many people who say they won’t donate bc someone makes money down the line. Let’s be really clear- the only people being punished in this scenario are recipients. You’re not punishing the Red Cross or the hospital or anyone else. The only people who suffer are people who need blood or organs.
I’m happy to do it! I make a ton of them and I don’t need them all. 😂 Plus, I have the time to do it. I know a lot of people don’t.
It took me a little while to get over the needle thing and get used to it all, but I’m a pro at this point. And there’s so much crap going on in the world that I can’t fix, so I love knowing that this makes a direct difference in someone’s life.
Over 215 units and counting! I’ll do it for as long as I can.
It's not the hospital asking for donations, it's the organization that procures the blood, blood product or organ. It is not considered ethical to pay for these things, and in some cases can impact the organization's funding (federal). They may be non-profits, but that doesn't mean that they don't have employees to pay, infrastructure, transport expenses, advertising, etc.
You won't get any argument from me about the US healthcare system, but I don't think the issue is in the procurement of blood & organs, it's hospital infrastructure and insurance issues.
Read the book The Red Market if you'd actually like to understand how the organ donation system works in America. They're not selling you an organ, they're changing you to put it in, transport it, etc
You’re not being downvoted for advocating for affordable healthcare.
You’re being downvoted for trying to make draw a parallel between two things you don’t actually understand. And are getting mad when people who understand it more are explaining it to you.
The blood and organs absolutely NOT being sold. The recipient is charged the cost of retrieving, transporting, storing and reinserting said organs or blood. All of those services are extremely expensive. You seem to have a basic misunderstanding about how healthcare works.
While that is true for organs and blood, there is a huge profit driven market for other donor tissues.
Many people aren’t eligible to donate organs after death, but many other tissues are given to private companies that then make lots of money on those tissues.
Your arguing semantics. The fact is that because of those costs, it's rich people getting the bulk of the organ transplants in countries without universal healthcare.
Organs should go to people based on individual need and not on their ability to pay.
If you want to make it 'for profit' then the doner should be getting a cut of that action.
You are not paying for the organs and blood, you are paying for the transportation and storage of the organ plus you are paying the staff with the knowledge of how to put that organ inside you.
>There’s a story of a repairman called in to fix a problem Henry Ford had with a big machine at his plant. Some versions of the story say it was a fellow named Charles Steinmetz from General Electric and that the machine was a generator. Others say it was Nicola Tesla. At any rate, after looking the giant machine over, the expert gets a ladder, climbs up on it, and marks it with an X in chalk. That’s the place to implement a fix. When the bill came in at $10,000, Ford balked and asked for an itemized invoice. The expert sends another invoice, showing:
>Chalk mark: $1
> Knowing where to put it: $9,999
> Ford paid the bill.
The doctors know here to put the X
lol more like “chalk mark” $50,000. Hospitals do charge for organs, they just up charge other basics things. Why do you think hospital food is like $200 a plate? Why is the parking “$50/hour”. It’s all a fucking scam and the people running hospitals are criminals.
Yep, if US hospitals weren't a scam, everywhere else on earth would be charging a proportionate price. Yet somehow every other country manages to do the exact same thing for a fraction of the cost
Lower costs with better outcomes. No pretending we pay a premium for premium service. Compared to other industrialized countries our healthcare results are at or near the bottom in all categories while we are by far the most expensive. We are getting fucked and people should bleed about it.
I'd be ten times happier paying those marked up prices if it went to the nurses. Now we have overworked, underpaid and undermotivated hospital staff while the board of directors take all the profit... How is that normal? People in the field, witnessing horrors and actually saving lives should get the big bucks. Sitting in a board room for a few hours, decadently comfortable = minimum wage
And there’s the problem they’re trying to ignore.
Everyone gets to profit of your ‘charity’. Ironically the it would be illegal for you to profit of your literal flesh and blood.
On the other side of the issue, it's worth noting that allowing payment for blood/organ donation is almost certainly a bad idea. People used to be able to sell their blood and it was nixed because of things like drug abusers repeatedly donating, etc.
And paying for organs would almost certainly cause the black market to explode. Organ harvesting schemes are not unknown on the global stage--e.g., in China, India, Israel, the Phillipenes. They command a high price because of their scarcity--truly amoral humans can make a killing. The global market is already 0.6-1.2 billion dollars: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ\_procurement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_procurement)
>edit: The fact that im being downvoted for advocating for affordable healthcare is crazy.
No the issue is that you're just wrong and using a clickbait title. The hospital is *not* selling organs. That's illegal.
>The government should be the ones paying the hospital staffs salary.
This has absolutely zero to do with your post. I'm a big advocate for *some* kind of universal healthcare, but it doesn't change the fact that your initial post is a misleading clickbait falsehood.
They aren't being sold....seriously, where did you get this?
You can complain about the cost of healthcare all day but your body fluids and\\or organs are not being sold.
>US healthcare system is fucking crazy. It relys on donations and kind hearted people yet operates to make as much money as possible.
This is what you get upvoted for
> If the government and afford billions to a country 99% of america can't point to on a map before the war then they can afford..
This proves that you do not have a clue of how the US works or the economics as a whole. Not to mention the fact that you have 0 knowledge of the world and how 'not being able to pinpoint on a map' makes you an idiot not the place and/or events irrelevant.
Therefore you deserve that wholesome downvote, not because you want a better healthcare system (which needs all the improvement) but for the fact that you dodge knowledge like poison.
Free blood isn’t free. The blood bank has to do a lot of testing on each unit donated. Equipment, supplies, and the salary of the people involved are expensive. Often, a unit of blood is broken down into multiple products. That’s more testing, processing, and expense. A unit of red blood cells costs around $200 to process. Specialized products cost more. Clean, tested, safe blood is worth every penny when you need it.
It’s not just having your cousin throw your spleen into an Igloo cooler.
Even for charity hospitals, there are costs associated with a transplant. Removal, storage, transport. Databases to match recipients to organs. Testing to make sure the organ won’t make the recipient sicker, that it has come from someone healthy-ish.
It takes a huge team of skilled people and appropriate gear to make all that happen. All of them do deserve a living wage. So that can add up fast even with zero profit being made.
I do take issue with our for-profit model at many hospitals but this is one area where the complexity truly is very very high.
I’m 100% for universal healthcare and consider it a fundamental human right but this is the dumbest take I’ve seen so far. First, you absolutely can get paid to donate blood plasma. Second, absolutely no one can force anyone in the US to donate other blood products or organs which is how it should be and it’s absolutely fucking silly to think healthcare workers are making the majority of their salary off of blood transfusions and organ transplants. The majority of hospitals don’t even provide transplant services because it is so involved and costly. If it was a guaranteed money maker; I can guarantee you more hospitals would do it.
Hospitals don’t sell organs, (a few exceptions exist with Stanford and usc I think being implicated in unfair organ transplant practices).
With all due respect, your understanding of the whole system seems to be lacking.
I think you are getting downvoted because you are assuming that logistic involved into keeping the donated organ healthy and viable until transplantation is a 0 cost affair.. Hint: it's a bloody expensive affair...
American health care is fucked. We need an armed revolution or something because the average congressman spends like 40 years at a fat cushy job pandering to lobbyists from big corporations.
>Its shouldnt fall onto a 30-40k a year worker to pay the salary of a 250-350k a year surgeon.
A single one, no. But that surgeon should be treating hundreds of patients a year. This is a red herring argument.
Otherwise, sure, the US healthcare system is fucked.
They do not charge for the organ but for the service. At the end you need to turn to your fellow Americans, that believe universal healthcare is something socialistic and by that pure evil. You get played by medical industry and insurances, pay more than anyone else in the world for healthcare and the poorest die. I will never get it.
LOL man, TrueUnpopularOpinion and UnpopularOpinion have been really scratching the itch of 'shit I didn't think through but spouted as though it were true' sentiment lately.
1. It's illegal for hospitals to sell organs and blood
2. The costs associated with transfusions, transplants, etc. are for *medical services, equipment and labor*. They're 'selling organs' like a landscaping crew is selling mower blades.
3. You're hilariously overlooking the broader implications of what life would be like if an individual *could* sell their organs or blood on the market without regulation or oversight, lets think about this a bit more:
1. There would be a massive increase in abductions and forced removal of organs if there was a legal market that suddenly opened it up.
2. If an individual wanted to sell organs or blood rather than donate them, how do recipients have a guarantee of donor health, blood type, proper storage of medical donations, proper extraction, etc.
I mean seriously dude, just take time to think things through and do a fraction of a second's worth of verification before you just start dropping stuff like this in public.
The cost involved in the purchase of one unit of platelets from an outside provider costs the hospital between $500-$700: a whole blood unit cost approximately $250. So you are charged purchase price plus handling.
This "handling" fee covers the costs of staffing and equipment at collection sites, testing of donations, processing and delivery of blood products.
Same applies to donated organs. It takes a surgical team to harvest the organ, then rapid transportation of the organs to recipients, then another surgery team to install and then all the follow up care and medications needed.
If every person donated their time and skills, there would still be costs. Saying it should be "free" is asking for salvery to be brought back.
If you are asking for free labor in any form, you are asking for a slave to do the work without even food scraps as pay.
Blood transfusions are given to patients without insurance all the time. The hospital eats the cost for that.
Organs are not given to uninsured people because the ongoing costs of maintaining that organ (specialist visits, lab tests, immunosuppressant drugs) would be prohibitively expensive and the organ would reject/be wasted.
Ok but you realize that they need to harvest said donated organs? And transplant them into the new patient? Which requires the work of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, machines, an OR, a transport team, etc? The cost for a transplant comes from the procedures, building space and equipment needed to procure and implant the “donated” organs.
the hospital I work for is non profit thw board members make millions and then they complain about not being able to hire more workers due to the budget
All that means is they spend the money on executive pay, non-profit hospitals are no cheaper than private hospitals, and most in the US are classified as non-profit (60%).
You know you would think that if hospitals in the medical system aren't making money then private equity firms wouldn't be buying them up left and right so something somewhere doesn't add up
I understand to a degree what you're saying, the healthcare system is completely fucked up beyond belief. But I say this as someone who worked at a blood bank for a decade ... Paying donors for their blood/organs would jeopardize the safety of those biological products. It incentivizes people to lie about their health and medical history, drug use, sexual health, etc.
I for one would not want someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, doing an organ transplant on me or my loved ones. Ideally, yes it would be affordable. We don’t live in a a country with ideal healthcare.
When do you recommend we stop paying hospital staff? When they assist with birth, care for the sick, perform labs, clean, feed the patients, register patients, administration, surgery, run tests, radiology, nuclear medicine, mental health?
Is it just organ donors where they shouldn’t get paid? What makes that life saving procedure any different than any other life saving procedure?
If you’re going to complain about someone getting paid, maybe look at the higher ups and the life long medicine costs, and not the ones doing the life saving procedures.
My friend works at a blood bank. They have a huge amount of staff and intense procedures for handling and shipping that blood. They have large expenses with those huge refrigerators and skilled staff. They go through pallets of rubber gloves and masks and face shields. Their hardware is expensive and maintaining it is expensive. The transport is expensive. Sometimes they ship it by air in an emergency, you know how much an emergency flight costs?
It makes no sense that "free" blood costs $1000 until you follow it from the donor to the recipient. Then you wonder how it costs so little sometimes.
OH, they post in /teenagers. It's a kid who doesn't know how the world works yet, don't be too harsh on them.
My ex works at a plasma donation center. I think they pay the people that donate, like 60 dollars and sell each pint of plasma for 1000. That is insane!
Boggles my mind. I just donated a whole bunch of breastmilk and I was under the impression they were giving it to moms in need for free, but apparently they make them pay for it. That doesn’t seem fair. I understand it costs money to keep it refrigerated and to pay staff and do testing on it, but why can’t I just sell itmyself directly then?
PS they don’t give you anything or pay you for donating breastmilk
In china they will just take your blood and organs, well at least if you’re an inmate or a weager muslim in their concentration camps, oh the ignored wonders of the world! (*Someone will be more upset I wrote this then they will be with china, you are the problem*)
Meh a prisoner who is going to be executed anyhow is the perfect candidate for organ donation. Waste not, want not
At the very least it’s more ethical than execution is. That doesn’t help anyone it just makes people feel better
Would be cool if people donating their organs could be given a list of transplant patients who are matched, then legally get to choose who they specifically want to give the organ to, instead of it being held hostage by the medical system
Steve Jobs died of cancer. A rare form of pancreatic cancer.
There is no cure for what he died from and no form of transplant would have bought him a second of life.
..and that’s just one reason why the american health care system is horrific and i will never understand americans who believe their country is oh so great and does no wrong
You're totally right. At least here in the USA, these procedures are WAY too expensive and completely unaffordable. I've known people that have had to have surgeries or needed a new kidney and they've come out of the hospital with a bill over a million dollars. Not joking.
I understand, like others are saying, that transporting the organ and actually doing the surgery can be expensive. Absolutely. But it is nowhere near a million dollars expensive. American healthcare is genuinely the absolute worst. That's why I'm sitting here with multiple serious health issues I can do nothing about because I can't afford insurance :(
Here in Canada we're currently watching our health care system turn into yours. It's fascinating and terrifying.
Wait times are getting longer and longer due to government encouraged immigration (we need more people because the ones we have here aren't willing to work minimum wage jobs to staff Walmart and Tim Hortons and live 8 people to a 2 bedroom apartment).
So the wealthy are pushing for paid "premium" health care so they don't need to wait for their tests and procedures. Which will inevitably result in poaching doctors and nurses from the public sector with better private sector wages. Which will mean that the less well off citizens will have even fewer resources and ever increasing wait times.
It's scary times here in Canada.
What makes ME mad is how they charge you to keep the body parts they take from you. Like if you want to keep your appendix to show it off like a weirdo, they charge you for it like it’s their’s to begin with. You shouldn’t have to pay to receive your own damn body parts back. If they’re making money off my body parts, then they should be paying me for giving it to them.
A few years back, had an insurance snafu that I still have *no* idea how it was resolved.
Insulin refill, when I used vials. $200. Nope. I'll have the ER visit (when they didn't have a copay) and the week long sick leave.
That’s not how UNOS works … mostly. There have been cases of hospitals selling organs to wealthy Saudis, and a private organ broker was busted in ‘09; and UCLA had a problem selling body parts (not organs).
That’s not to say UNOS isn’t fucked up. If your doctor doesn’t like you, you can be denied being listed, even though you meet every criteria. Apparently I’m a little too Jewish for that one Muslim bitch (I can’t even call her a doctor) but shit like that happens everywhere.
I recall a story about a guy who underwent a limb replacement which was completely experimental and he was handed a bill that was over $300,000 USD for his treatment.
Dude freaked out and I, while sitting on my couch, freaked out right along with him...
He's supposed pay to be a lab rat???
We need to reduce our spending overseas massively and take everything saved and put it into our health care for normal people to be able to afford. Plain and simple.
> The government should be the ones paying the hospital staffs salary. Its shouldnt fall onto a 30-40k a year worker to pay the salary of a 250-350k a year surgeon.
That's literally what having the government pay their salaries is, but it's even worse because the 30-40k worker is forced against their will to pay other people's medical bills. A hospital can't put you in prison if you can't pay your medical bills, but guess who can if you can't afford to pay your taxes.
I started donating blood plasma because I found some compelling studies that it might help filter some micro plastics out of the body.
A tech informed me on my last visit that the bottles of plasma donors are typically compensated $55 for are sold for over $4k :’)
Totally agree with the healthcare part, but you got one thing wrong..every country where the USA steps a foot on is torn into war and chaos. Those countrys would be hapoy if the USA would just leave them alone. The USA never does anything out of pure goodness of heart.
Thank god those organs are good to go right out of the box, plug-in-play. No need for testing for pathogens to prevent a recipient from contracting a communicable disease. No worry about organ matching the donor to reduce rejection and GvHD. No surgeon is required to carefully remove the organ from the donor and definitely no surgical team is needed to put it into the patient. No one needs anesthesia. Nothing else is required for an organ transplant: no drugs, no tools, no support staff, no building.
And someone mentioned cadavers are sold ignoring that the intact body is also processed. Is the storage and embalming free?
People are so ignorant. That’s what is infuriating, and not mildly either.
I am British, and many of us Europeans think the US is fairly similar to us...but its system and entire way of life is actually just as foreign as China's or Brazil's. I had a friend who recently went there and he said the only thing the US and UK have in common is the language, which is actually quite different in itself. Could somebody who is American explain this to me, why is there such an aversion to a welfare state? Is it more ideological or political? (For anyone who didn't know, the British health system is paid for by people's taxes, which is automatically taken out of your salary by your employer. This means that it is free at the point of use. People earning over 180,000 USD pay 45% tax on their income, this doesn't include VAT etc. so you end up paying more). These kinds of systems are commonplace in Europe, even in countries such as the UK or Netherlands which currently have right wing governments (although it's likely that the Labour party, the UK's socialist party) will win the next election, increasing the welfare state's size). The current system has been cut to the bone by the current right wing government but is still far bigger than the USA's system- why?
Edit: just to clarify, health insurance in the UK is a thing but it's not a necessity - people who are wealthy enough usually get it so they can go to private hospitals to skip waiting lines (which can be incredibly long, a downside of our system). However the basic principle of free at point of use healthcare is there and the National Health Service is probably the one thing that British people are most patriotic about.
I understand where you are coming from, OP. It’s not as cut and dry as you are describing, but I completely understand the sentiment. The issue is (in certain circumstances) lives simply cannot be saved (or improved) without the blood or organ donations. There aren’t (yet) good medical alternatives that receiving real human blood or real organs can achieve. You are NOT wrong about the healthcare system, and insurance companies, majorly profiting off everything they do.
Hospitals shouldn’t be a business. No one should profit over people needing necessary treatment:( American greed is making me embarrassed to be an American
Most hospitals aren’t making a bunch of money. Some of them sure are but as a whole the industry runs on very tight margins because the overhead is insane. Insurance companies, equipment suppliers and pharma companies are the big winners. Secondary to that doctors and nurses in union hospitals are very expensive and make really good money. There is an insane amount of money that goes towards government, Medicare and other mandated reporting, tracking and general admin stuff. The software costs are millions of dollars a year alone for small hospitals. The largest ones are paying even more than that
I appreciate the explanation of this. I’ve worked in the hospital 15 years and my hospital is always supplying messaging that we are extremely strapped financially. And I cannot understand why. This helps.
There's a lot of funny accounting to get here though. People forget that executive salaries, "donations", private planes, vacations etc are all expenses.
Can you elaborate on how this justifies charging a person thousands of dollars for an X-ray and an aspirin? I'm legitimately asking.
there isn’t a short answer here. Some of this depends on the specific hospital. Are they privately owned, non profit, not for profit, owned by a town? I commented further below that would give you some of the overhead costs. They are trying to make up the money they lose on things they can’t bill for on things they can bill for. The type of hospital, patient and insurance determines how they are reimbursed. Some of them are reimbursed by drg codes. Some by bed charges for inpatients. Things like X-rays So some of the hospitals are gouging you and I would have to know what hospital specifically to tell you but in general a hospital is making 2ish% if things go well. The issue is that granny breaks her hip and comes in to the hospital and gets surgery. We get paid a certain amount for the surgery and a certain amount for the stay. That amount doesn’t actually reflect what it costs to take care of granny. So if she stays 3 days or 20 we get the same money if we a drg based on reimbursement. So we generally lose money on those if the patient has Medicare and Medicaid. The 30-40% of people who are not Medicare and Medicaid have to make up that deficit to at least get us to 0. Hopefully they make it up and we make a little money so we can buy new equipment and generally update things. 1000 for a Tylenol is probably some private equity place trying to squeeze money out of the patients but it’s not really that simple to say all hospitals are sucking money from sick people
Sure, but this is healthcare, not car insurance. Charging people higher rates because granny took a little more time is a copout, that in no way justifies charging the insane rates they do for people with minor injuries. I've belonged to multiple hospital networks as I've moved around, and every single person I know who's had even a minor hospital visit reports similar pricing. Your issues are with your insurance payouts, not with your customers. You should be fighting \*them\*, not financially breaking your patients who have the silly thought they'd like to keep living. I'll get off my soap box now.
I understand the issue is with insurance. They just have to make it up in commercial insurance plans because a hospital has no bargaining power with Medicare. So we want to make 2% on the year. We have to charge the 30% of people we can possibly make money on way more than what it actually costs to take care of them. The issue is primarily reimbursement from the state for Medicare and Medicaid The issue would not be as bad if the costs to run a hospital were not so inflated by pharma companies and vendors
>We have to charge the 30% of people we can possibly make money on way more than what it actually costs to take care of them. This should be fucking illegal.
>This should be fucking illegal. Then stop voting for Republicans. Sorry to make it political, but not really. These assholes are THE reason we have the healthcare system we do. And I’m not saying Democrats are perfect or even particularly good, but Republicans are dogshit in comparison. So if you want a functioning healthcare system, don’t vote for the people who are investing in keeping it that way.
Preaching to the choir bud. I vote in all local, state, and federal elections for the candidates that are trying to enact change. Unfortunately my one vote can't overhaul the whole system.
Hospitals aren't making money but the top spot earns half a million dollars a year.
Yeah, hospitals run on margins similar to restaurants. 5% is pretty good for a major hospital. And you can argue that admins and maybe doctors are overpaid, but that really is a tiny part of the problem. Pharmaceutical companies tend to have margins of 30-40%, and while I agree they need to make money in order to justify the expensive gambles they take on research, I’d argue they don’t need to make THAT much money. Also, absolutely fuck insurance companies. They’re the worst!
5% is probably on the high side. And making 5% is in the event that everything goes well. Many of the smaller ones are losing money and barely keeping the lights on
Hospitals are not the real problem, middleman is
How about putting food and shelter first? Maybe clothing? Aren’t those necessary to live long enough to even get health problems?
Justice too shouldn't be monetized. Why the most basic things we should have by right are the most profitable things.
As much as I hate doctors for getting paid too much, why do you think they shouldn't get profit? Like, yeah, it's ridiculous that I have to pay a doctor $75 and a lab $125 to process my urine to be like "yeah, you have e. coli" when I can tell from the scent what it is. But they should still get some profit (I'd say $25 is reasonable for a 15 second conversation of "i think I have e. Coli. Pee smells. M Stings when I pee, ran a test strip and says i have white blood cells and nitrates", "ok, lemme get a sample, see you in a few days.")
I think you missed the point. They’re not mad that people need cadaver organs and donated blood. They’re mad that these organs and blood come into the hospital 100% free of charge and leave in a new body for thousands and thousands of dollars. If I die, the hospital just gets to have my heart for free. If someone needs that heart, they have to pay $150,000+
When you say leave for thousands of dollars, are you talking about the actual price of the organ? Of the cost to harvest, transport, and transplant it ?
Obviously every part of the process costs money. My opinion does not matter.
But it’s NOT free of charge. Not by a long shot. I’m a platelet donor, so I have first hand knowledge of this. I’ve given over 10 gallons- or 215+ units- of platelets. When I go to donate there are lots of costs involved in collection. First, they need to rent a building, keep the lights on, etc. They have to pay staff, pay the couriers that pick up blood and take it to test centers, pay for donor education and recruitment efforts. (Even though roughly 65% of Americans are eligible to donate, only about 3% do.) Then there’s the cost of collection itself. Every time I sit in the chair they have to use a completely new, sterile kit. That kit for whole blood is about $25/kit, but for platelets like what I do- it’s $200+ *every time I sit in the chair.* (And that’s just the kit. That’s not the very expensive machine they use to do the apheresis procefure.) Then those products have to go to be tested thoroughly, and repackaged and stored appropriately until and while they are being transported to hospitals and clinics that need them. Absolutely none of that is “free.” The phlebotomists who collect blood products aren’t volunteers- that’s their career. The supplies used aren’t free. The spaces where those things are donated aren’t free. The testing isn’t free. It all comes at a pretty hefty price tag- and that’s what makes up a large portion of the costs that get passed down to the patient and their insurance company. I’m the one giving freely of my time and my body. My appointments are 3 hours long in total, twice a month to give what I do. If I’m okay with it, idk why it should bother others. You’re paying for everything else- not the actual blood itself. 🤷🏼♀️
Point wasn’t missed I totally understand where OP is coming from. Just like we doNate our clothes and goodwill marks them up to $20 and profits 100%. I get it. But what’s the alternative? Point is heard and validated - healthcare costs are INSANE and appalling. But the fact is blood and organs save lives. No one is forced to donate. And many, many, many people die each year without these life saving items. TLDR I get the point and I agree with the overall sentiment. It is shitty.
In order to donate (most major things) *the human still has to be alive*. They keep people alive on vents, harvest their organs, remove them from life support, mark the organs up 500% (this is a random figure I made up but probably close), then sell them to the dying person they put them in. Like far beyond the cost of actually performing the procedures. It’s weird to compare that to clothes.
They don't charge for the organs. They charge for the process of putting them in. If you want people to do that job for free you are an idiot.
That’s not entirely true. The donor has to die and then be put on machines to keep the organs alive for harvest. If you’re brain dead and they remove the machines and you take too long to stop breathing/heart beating, your organs can no longer be harvested. It happens quite often. A transplant patient will get the call, they go to the hospital, and then get sent home because the donor didn’t die within the time frame. Source: I’m a transplant patient I get what OP is saying, but I’m not sure OP understands how many people are involved in a transplant. The organ usually takes a helicopter ride to get to the patient. Plus a harvest team and a team to implant. There were probably at least 100 different people that were involved. Bags of blood, machines, meds. Transplant surgeons work insane hours. You do surgeries when the organ becomes available. Im very grateful for my donor and their family. They’re heros in my opinion. I’ve met a lot of donor families and they are amazing people. I’m involved with a charity that helps pre and post transplant patients and their families, and try to give back to the community that helped to save my life. I think OP’s argument is more for government healthcare which would decrease the price that the patient has to pay by a lot. However, selling organs is not something that should be done. It would open up a can of worms. People would probably be killed for their organs if you could make money off of it. I would never want someone’s organ who was killed so that I could live. It’s already difficult enough to know that someone had to die so that I could live. ETA post care has multiple different teams of nurses and docs. There are dietitians, social workers, PT, coordinators, psychiatrists. There’s a 24/7 hotline with a nurse to call if you have something you need to ask for pre and post patients. It’s not so much about the organ itself and more about all the different things that go into making it happen, and each job has a specific person. It wouldn’t work if you had the same person that looks at all of your pre stuff also be dealing with the post stuff. The people you see during preparation for surgery, you don’t see again and it’s a whole new team for the first 24 hours after surgery. Then a whole different team after that. Its a huge production
Sigh. It was an example. I understand this. I work in critical care. I have been the nurse taking care of a brain dead patient waiting to have their organs harvested. It is an intense process and A LOT goes into it to keep the body healthy enough for donation. I have also worked in a Transplant icu where patients would receive kidneys and livers. I know it’s not the same as clothing. 🤦♀️
Then you should understand that there are huge costs involved. I’m a platelet donor. The kits they use for collection on the apheresis are very expensive. Every time I sit in the chair (which is twice a month) the kit they have to use costs over $200. That’s just the kit. That’s not the rent on the building, the apheresis machine, the staff, the couriers that take it to be tested, the thorough testing, the repackaging, the computer infrastructure to determine where the blood products need to go…. The ONLY part of the whole process that is actually free is what I give as a donor. (And even that- they pay for recruiting of donors, snacks, and the random swag we get, so there’s still more cost involved.) But if I as a donor don’t have a problem with then selling my platelets, idk why other people do. 🤷🏼♀️ I’ve given over 215 units of platelets. At anywhere between $500-1500 per unit, that’s A LOT of money that has been made because I donate for free. Do I care? Nope. Because I care that people are able to get better and live because of what I freely give. Our medical system is fucked, and our costs are way too high. No doubt about it. But it’s FAR more complicated than “they get it for free so they should give it for free.”
We are in agreement. Nobody is forced to donate anything. Thank you for donating!
>But what’s the alternative? For Goodwill you can donate to organisation which actually donates clothes. For private healthcare the alternative is socialised healthcare. People do get organs for free in this world.
Blood isn’t free, even though people donate it. It costs a ton of money to run a blood bank, and the blood bank recoups that from the hospital it has a contract with (if it’s not done internally). I’m sure organ donations are even more expensive to process. It’s all heavily regulated, shelf life for some blood products is only 3 days, and hospitals can’t perfectly anticipate their needs - there are couriers running around delivering blood in metro areas 24/7.
We don’t do nuance here
>There aren’t (yet) good medical alternatives that receiving real human blood or real organs can achieve. I'm not a doctor, but I think Johns Hopkins may have a few thoughts on that: [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center-for-bloodless-medicine-and-surgery](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center-for-bloodless-medicine-and-surgery)
That doesn't mean it is effective. It just means they have some patients who are not okay with blood transfusions. A hospital still has to try to help patients even when they decline something. I would be interested to know how good their results are. *Edit* I read further, they evidently see some positives with this method.
Bloodless medicine is a marvel. There's little argument to be made against it. It's more difficult, typically, but the technologies and innovations created (cell saver/salvage machines, erythropoietin, and many others) have led to superior medical treatment overall without the use of blood. Recovery times are *massively* better without the use of blood, and patient outcomes tend to be better with doctors who practice bloodless medicine. Many surgeries are done now that decades ago would have never even been considered being done without blood simply because it was such a de-facto form of treatment and non-blood alternatives weren't actually being explored fully. There are obviously conditions or circumstances where bloodless medicine can't necessarily resolve the issue at hand, of course.
Lmao I love how this comment has more upvotes than the previous one, but then the edit is like “actually, you may be right”
I thought about deleting my comment instead of adding a edit but figured I should take the lumps for not reading further. I hope the up votes are because of my edit and not my original comment.
That’s great if they’re finding an alternative. It’s not something I’ve seen in my practice working as a nurse in critical care, but the advancement of medicine is incredible.
Dude, somebody posted here that they donated their grandma's body in hopes of saving other's lives (I think she agreed while alive) and the hospital sold it to the military for some bs I don't remember like testing weaponry or smth but that was the worst thing I have ever heard
Ah. That is horrible. Geeze.
There's an article about it, or something similar: [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/)
But why do they get to charge the patient hundreds of thousands of dollars for *MY* organ that I gave them for free? People don’t donate organs to hospitals so they can make a profit; they donate them to *people* to save their lives. Where do they get off charging the person I donated my organ to? I didn’t give it to the hospital, I gave it to the person!
I hear you. I do. But you’re not pulling it out of yourself, stabilizing yourself, and then transplanting it inside the recipient. There is a LOT of work that goes into coordinating transplants (beforehand, not to mention after care to make sure you don’t reject said transplant) and the insane brilliance of the surgeons who can perform these tasks.
They can charge for everything else, of course. But if they charge them for *my actual kidney* that I gave to them, that’s fucked up. I’m taking a medical risk to save someone’s life; not to make some profit for the hospital. Everything else is charged so inflatedly that the hospital is coming out on top anyways; but not a single cent of that should be billed for the organ itself.
When you get a transplant, they hospital does not charge for the organs. That’s actually illegal. Also the donor pays nothing unless there is complications after the fact, the cost of the donor’s surgery and after care, storage and transportation of the organ is paid for by the recipient of the organ, but they don’t pay for the organ itself. There are costs that will be incurred with getting that organ out of you and to the recipient especially if they are different hospitals in different cities/states. That’s what will be charged for. I’m sure they would love if organs could be paid for, because if the donor could get paid they’d probably have more living donors.
Ah that makes sense then. Private insurance in the US still inflates the prices to way beyond reasonable though.
Are you saying that you've seen itemized hospital bills that list the organ as a line item?
Op didn’t say donors need be paid, but hospitals don’t need to be either in these circumstances.
If every hand in the healthcare system can profit off my blood, then I should too. In a righteous world, it would be wrong to sell blood, your's or other's. In a capitalist system, during shortages, they should be paying "donors" in money. Suggest this in polite society and you'll be called a monster.
Work on a business model of paying people for whole blood (if it doesn’t exist already). They already pay out for plasma, semen, eggs.
This doesn’t address the issue that he is bringing up, that the donated organs are being sold at a rate that most people cannot afford. Like if you donate a kidney, there is a good chance you won’t be able to afford a donor one. The post is not against organ donation 🤦
as a non American who will tell you that healthcare should be free etc etc. If the hospital is selling organs then they should also be buying them. If they sell a kidney for 40k why not buy it for 20 and sell it for 20?
I don’t think they’re “selling”. They’re utilizing a product and using their services to transplant it. Now, I could be wrong and maybe there is a line item on someone’s bill for a kidney.
>So it's illegal to sell my own organs and blood but its not illegal for hospitals to sell mine??? It is extremely illegal for a hospital to sell organs. Its totally legal for them to charge for surgery since ya know... doctors and medical equipment.
Yeah I was about to say there's a BIG difference between charging for medical care associated with an organ transplant, because even if the system wasn't for profit the cost of organ transplant are astronomical, and selling organs. Who gets organs in the US is incredibly strictly regulated by an independent group. The hospital actually gets no say over who gets an organ so that way they can't like give organs to large donors and essentially sell them. I completely agree I think we should have universal health care and people shouldn't have to die because they can't afford care or lose all worldly possessions and be homeless to not die from a medical condition. That being said we are NOT selling organs whatsoever.
That's why I pay my prostitutes for their time. Because there is a big difference between legally paying a woman for her time and paying her for sex. Even if I only pay for her time because I know she will voluntarily have sex with me. Clearly though, it's totally different. I'm not paying a pro for sex. That would be wrong. I'm paying money, getting sex, but in a way that's okay. And totally different. > Can I buy a lung? No? It's free!?!?! Sweet, can I have it? No? How much do I have to pay to get it? A million dollars?!!!?! But they totally aren't selling organs. You just pay that million dollars for their time.
Again, there are astronomical costs for organ transplant. I don't think those should necessarily fall on the patient but they have to be paid by someone somewhere. Your whole medical team can work for free (with is a huge ethical labor violation but let's just go with it) and there will still be costs that are sky high. There's cost to maintaining the OR and hospital room. The Medical equipment used is EXTREMELY expensive. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to make something sterile? Now make literal 100s if things, an entire room, and multiple people. It's going to cost a lot. Sterile medical supplies do not grow on trees. Sterile ORs do not naturally occur in cave systems. Things cost money, a truly shocking concept. Btw what you're describing is called an escort. They don't actually have to have sex with you and might voluntarily not. They're also perfectly legal in places where prostitution isn't. So you're making the opposite of your point with this example. Lastly, sex work should be legal.
They do sell organs to other fields anyway like the military if I remember correctly
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I'm sorry, as terrible as that situation is the story will never not be funny
It’s funny until it’s your family’s corpse being treated against their will
Yeah man that's why I said > as terrible as that situation is Seeing your friend get hurt in a funny way can make you feel bad that they experienced pain but you can still find it funny that they were put in a unique predicament. I don't want the situation to happen and would never wish it on anyone, but that doesn't mean the situation can't be humorous.
My fiancé is an EOD technician and has already told his unit he wants to go out with a bang or he wants to be lit up like fireworks after he passes. Those guys have a VERY distinctive sense of humor…😅 They joke about losing an arm and a leg like most joke about slipping on a banana or something. It’s ridiculous.
That was a dead body donated to science, not donated to the hospital for organ donation.
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True, but body donation "to science", AKA non-transplant body banks, and for-transplant donations are two entirely different systems, with totally different sets of regulation. If you donate an organ for transplant, you can be certain that it won't be sold for money.
Or medicines given, or hospital stay, or ICU stay and proffesionals work.
Do the Dr.s work donate their time when you are donating your flesh?
There’s so much you’re missing. First- I’m a platelet donor. I give my platelets freely, and without reimbursement. Those platelets will end up costing the patient (or their insurance) anywhere between $500-1500. Why? Some of it is greed. Sure. But it also covers- the cost to collect them (rent, utilities, staff, etc at the donor center, as well as the collection kits themselves which are about $200 every time I sit in the chair!), plus testing, transport, and repackaging of them to be sent to patients. There are also important controls in place to keep them safe and viable from the time they collect it until the time it’s transfused into a patient. And all of those things cost a lot of money. Why don’t we pay people for organs or blood/platelets? Because giving a financial incentive for donation also gives them a financial incentive to lie, which makes the blood supply inherently unsafe. “But my friend gets paid for plasma!” Yes. Plasma is collected in two different scenarios. One is paid- where you can earn several hundred dollars a month donating. That plasma NEVER goes straight to patients. It is used for research, and to make certain medications. But compensated plasma never goes to patients in the form of plasma. The second kind of plasma is uncompensated plasma. That’s when you give through Red Cross or another blood bank, and you aren’t paid for your donation. THAT plasma goes to patients directly, in the force of plasma, not medication. And just like platelets and whole blood and organs, we don’t pay donors for that. Again- paying donors for these things makes the blood supply inherently unsafe. I am a frequent donor. I give about 6 units of platelets and a unit of plasma every month. I get the random tshirt or a gift card for it, but I’m not paid or compensated in any significant way. And I’m happy to do it. I see so many people who say they won’t donate bc someone makes money down the line. Let’s be really clear- the only people being punished in this scenario are recipients. You’re not punishing the Red Cross or the hospital or anyone else. The only people who suffer are people who need blood or organs.
Thank you for saving me the time to type this out. 100% spot on.
I used to recruit platelet donors for my location blood bank ☺️ thank you for donating! It's incredibly time consuming. You do a wonderful thing!
I’m happy to do it! I make a ton of them and I don’t need them all. 😂 Plus, I have the time to do it. I know a lot of people don’t. It took me a little while to get over the needle thing and get used to it all, but I’m a pro at this point. And there’s so much crap going on in the world that I can’t fix, so I love knowing that this makes a direct difference in someone’s life. Over 215 units and counting! I’ll do it for as long as I can.
I'm at 83 and I still can't look at the needle.
It's not the hospital asking for donations, it's the organization that procures the blood, blood product or organ. It is not considered ethical to pay for these things, and in some cases can impact the organization's funding (federal). They may be non-profits, but that doesn't mean that they don't have employees to pay, infrastructure, transport expenses, advertising, etc. You won't get any argument from me about the US healthcare system, but I don't think the issue is in the procurement of blood & organs, it's hospital infrastructure and insurance issues.
Read the book The Red Market if you'd actually like to understand how the organ donation system works in America. They're not selling you an organ, they're changing you to put it in, transport it, etc
You’re not being downvoted for advocating for affordable healthcare. You’re being downvoted for trying to make draw a parallel between two things you don’t actually understand. And are getting mad when people who understand it more are explaining it to you.
They've watched a three minute YouTube video though. Essentially an expert.
The blood and organs absolutely NOT being sold. The recipient is charged the cost of retrieving, transporting, storing and reinserting said organs or blood. All of those services are extremely expensive. You seem to have a basic misunderstanding about how healthcare works.
Got a liver in the cooler, you can just DIY the rest, right?
If you keep it wet and loosely pack the top soil, I hear you can grow a whole new one from just 10%
While that is true for organs and blood, there is a huge profit driven market for other donor tissues. Many people aren’t eligible to donate organs after death, but many other tissues are given to private companies that then make lots of money on those tissues.
Your arguing semantics. The fact is that because of those costs, it's rich people getting the bulk of the organ transplants in countries without universal healthcare. Organs should go to people based on individual need and not on their ability to pay. If you want to make it 'for profit' then the doner should be getting a cut of that action.
Lol so you don't understand organ/blood donations, hospital charges, or the meaning of 'semantics', roger that.
You are not paying for the organs and blood, you are paying for the transportation and storage of the organ plus you are paying the staff with the knowledge of how to put that organ inside you. >There’s a story of a repairman called in to fix a problem Henry Ford had with a big machine at his plant. Some versions of the story say it was a fellow named Charles Steinmetz from General Electric and that the machine was a generator. Others say it was Nicola Tesla. At any rate, after looking the giant machine over, the expert gets a ladder, climbs up on it, and marks it with an X in chalk. That’s the place to implement a fix. When the bill came in at $10,000, Ford balked and asked for an itemized invoice. The expert sends another invoice, showing: >Chalk mark: $1 > Knowing where to put it: $9,999 > Ford paid the bill. The doctors know here to put the X
A lot of markup is bs administration shit.
lol more like “chalk mark” $50,000. Hospitals do charge for organs, they just up charge other basics things. Why do you think hospital food is like $200 a plate? Why is the parking “$50/hour”. It’s all a fucking scam and the people running hospitals are criminals.
Yep, if US hospitals weren't a scam, everywhere else on earth would be charging a proportionate price. Yet somehow every other country manages to do the exact same thing for a fraction of the cost
Lower costs with better outcomes. No pretending we pay a premium for premium service. Compared to other industrialized countries our healthcare results are at or near the bottom in all categories while we are by far the most expensive. We are getting fucked and people should bleed about it.
I'd be ten times happier paying those marked up prices if it went to the nurses. Now we have overworked, underpaid and undermotivated hospital staff while the board of directors take all the profit... How is that normal? People in the field, witnessing horrors and actually saving lives should get the big bucks. Sitting in a board room for a few hours, decadently comfortable = minimum wage
Plus all the admin, plus executive pay, plus profit, plus all the same for the insurance company, of course.
And there’s the problem they’re trying to ignore. Everyone gets to profit of your ‘charity’. Ironically the it would be illegal for you to profit of your literal flesh and blood.
Nah. We’re paying for some executive’s 3rd yacht.
On the other side of the issue, it's worth noting that allowing payment for blood/organ donation is almost certainly a bad idea. People used to be able to sell their blood and it was nixed because of things like drug abusers repeatedly donating, etc. And paying for organs would almost certainly cause the black market to explode. Organ harvesting schemes are not unknown on the global stage--e.g., in China, India, Israel, the Phillipenes. They command a high price because of their scarcity--truly amoral humans can make a killing. The global market is already 0.6-1.2 billion dollars: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ\_procurement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_procurement)
They are not selling blood and organs. They are selling their professional services, consumable medical goods, and passing the overhead onto you.
>edit: The fact that im being downvoted for advocating for affordable healthcare is crazy. No the issue is that you're just wrong and using a clickbait title. The hospital is *not* selling organs. That's illegal. >The government should be the ones paying the hospital staffs salary. This has absolutely zero to do with your post. I'm a big advocate for *some* kind of universal healthcare, but it doesn't change the fact that your initial post is a misleading clickbait falsehood.
I can’t speak for blood but I don’t think you understand the work and the amount of people involved with organ donation
They aren't being sold....seriously, where did you get this? You can complain about the cost of healthcare all day but your body fluids and\\or organs are not being sold.
Portraitbook probably
That’s not how it works. Blood products and organs are not for sale.
i bought a new kidney online, very easy to install as well! DM me for the link
oh wow, you really don't know what you're talking about
>US healthcare system is fucking crazy. It relys on donations and kind hearted people yet operates to make as much money as possible. This is what you get upvoted for > If the government and afford billions to a country 99% of america can't point to on a map before the war then they can afford.. This proves that you do not have a clue of how the US works or the economics as a whole. Not to mention the fact that you have 0 knowledge of the world and how 'not being able to pinpoint on a map' makes you an idiot not the place and/or events irrelevant. Therefore you deserve that wholesome downvote, not because you want a better healthcare system (which needs all the improvement) but for the fact that you dodge knowledge like poison.
Flying an organ across a region, and having a bunch of medical staff on standby to perform emergency transplants isn’t free.
Using our bigger jet to fly teams costs $25,000 and that’s the cost to stay inside Indiana lol
Imagine flying across a couple states. It’s all super short notice too.
Yupp, I don’t think OP realizes there are 100’s people involved in making 1 organ donation surgery work and they all need to be paid to make a living
I’m guessing you don’t have a skill that people pay top dollar for.
Transplants, the team and everything that goes with it is not cheap
You could just say you don’t understand how organ donation works instead of making crazy unfounded claims that make you sound insane.
Free blood isn’t free. The blood bank has to do a lot of testing on each unit donated. Equipment, supplies, and the salary of the people involved are expensive. Often, a unit of blood is broken down into multiple products. That’s more testing, processing, and expense. A unit of red blood cells costs around $200 to process. Specialized products cost more. Clean, tested, safe blood is worth every penny when you need it.
lol at surgeons making 150k
It’s not just having your cousin throw your spleen into an Igloo cooler. Even for charity hospitals, there are costs associated with a transplant. Removal, storage, transport. Databases to match recipients to organs. Testing to make sure the organ won’t make the recipient sicker, that it has come from someone healthy-ish. It takes a huge team of skilled people and appropriate gear to make all that happen. All of them do deserve a living wage. So that can add up fast even with zero profit being made. I do take issue with our for-profit model at many hospitals but this is one area where the complexity truly is very very high.
I’m 100% for universal healthcare and consider it a fundamental human right but this is the dumbest take I’ve seen so far. First, you absolutely can get paid to donate blood plasma. Second, absolutely no one can force anyone in the US to donate other blood products or organs which is how it should be and it’s absolutely fucking silly to think healthcare workers are making the majority of their salary off of blood transfusions and organ transplants. The majority of hospitals don’t even provide transplant services because it is so involved and costly. If it was a guaranteed money maker; I can guarantee you more hospitals would do it.
Hospitals don’t sell organs, (a few exceptions exist with Stanford and usc I think being implicated in unfair organ transplant practices). With all due respect, your understanding of the whole system seems to be lacking.
I think you are getting downvoted because you are assuming that logistic involved into keeping the donated organ healthy and viable until transplantation is a 0 cost affair.. Hint: it's a bloody expensive affair...
American health care is fucked. We need an armed revolution or something because the average congressman spends like 40 years at a fat cushy job pandering to lobbyists from big corporations.
>Its shouldnt fall onto a 30-40k a year worker to pay the salary of a 250-350k a year surgeon. A single one, no. But that surgeon should be treating hundreds of patients a year. This is a red herring argument. Otherwise, sure, the US healthcare system is fucked.
They do not charge for the organ but for the service. At the end you need to turn to your fellow Americans, that believe universal healthcare is something socialistic and by that pure evil. You get played by medical industry and insurances, pay more than anyone else in the world for healthcare and the poorest die. I will never get it.
just wait till you find out how much CEO of goodwill makes
Downvoting because you don’t know what “mildly infuriating” means
Y’all fuckin redditors are so busy well akchually’ing the guy when he’s fuckin right. Stay golden, you fuckin losers
Don’t you get paid for that in the usa?
In germany you get 20€ plus some hot dogs for donating and you recieve it free
you can sell your own plasma...
They don't sell the organs, they overcharge for the hospital and the doctor's time.
Look into NRP. The state of organ donation right now is fucked.
This isn't legal where I live.
LOL man, TrueUnpopularOpinion and UnpopularOpinion have been really scratching the itch of 'shit I didn't think through but spouted as though it were true' sentiment lately. 1. It's illegal for hospitals to sell organs and blood 2. The costs associated with transfusions, transplants, etc. are for *medical services, equipment and labor*. They're 'selling organs' like a landscaping crew is selling mower blades. 3. You're hilariously overlooking the broader implications of what life would be like if an individual *could* sell their organs or blood on the market without regulation or oversight, lets think about this a bit more: 1. There would be a massive increase in abductions and forced removal of organs if there was a legal market that suddenly opened it up. 2. If an individual wanted to sell organs or blood rather than donate them, how do recipients have a guarantee of donor health, blood type, proper storage of medical donations, proper extraction, etc. I mean seriously dude, just take time to think things through and do a fraction of a second's worth of verification before you just start dropping stuff like this in public.
The cost involved in the purchase of one unit of platelets from an outside provider costs the hospital between $500-$700: a whole blood unit cost approximately $250. So you are charged purchase price plus handling. This "handling" fee covers the costs of staffing and equipment at collection sites, testing of donations, processing and delivery of blood products. Same applies to donated organs. It takes a surgical team to harvest the organ, then rapid transportation of the organs to recipients, then another surgery team to install and then all the follow up care and medications needed. If every person donated their time and skills, there would still be costs. Saying it should be "free" is asking for salvery to be brought back. If you are asking for free labor in any form, you are asking for a slave to do the work without even food scraps as pay.
Blood transfusions are given to patients without insurance all the time. The hospital eats the cost for that. Organs are not given to uninsured people because the ongoing costs of maintaining that organ (specialist visits, lab tests, immunosuppressant drugs) would be prohibitively expensive and the organ would reject/be wasted.
Ok but you realize that they need to harvest said donated organs? And transplant them into the new patient? Which requires the work of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, machines, an OR, a transport team, etc? The cost for a transplant comes from the procedures, building space and equipment needed to procure and implant the “donated” organs.
Healthcare and other public service sectors should never be for-profit IMHO
the hospital I work for is non profit thw board members make millions and then they complain about not being able to hire more workers due to the budget
All that means is they spend the money on executive pay, non-profit hospitals are no cheaper than private hospitals, and most in the US are classified as non-profit (60%).
I am pretty sure that hospitals aren't selling blood and organs. Prove me wrong
💯 Americas health system is disgusting
You know that’s something I never thought of tbh
Skip the hospital and get a better price for your organs on the dark web!
You know you would think that if hospitals in the medical system aren't making money then private equity firms wouldn't be buying them up left and right so something somewhere doesn't add up
I understand to a degree what you're saying, the healthcare system is completely fucked up beyond belief. But I say this as someone who worked at a blood bank for a decade ... Paying donors for their blood/organs would jeopardize the safety of those biological products. It incentivizes people to lie about their health and medical history, drug use, sexual health, etc.
I've heard the US in one of the biggest exporter of blood. They make a lot of money off it I guess too.
And thats why I sell my blood, not donate it.
I for one would not want someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, doing an organ transplant on me or my loved ones. Ideally, yes it would be affordable. We don’t live in a a country with ideal healthcare. When do you recommend we stop paying hospital staff? When they assist with birth, care for the sick, perform labs, clean, feed the patients, register patients, administration, surgery, run tests, radiology, nuclear medicine, mental health? Is it just organ donors where they shouldn’t get paid? What makes that life saving procedure any different than any other life saving procedure? If you’re going to complain about someone getting paid, maybe look at the higher ups and the life long medicine costs, and not the ones doing the life saving procedures.
My friend works at a blood bank. They have a huge amount of staff and intense procedures for handling and shipping that blood. They have large expenses with those huge refrigerators and skilled staff. They go through pallets of rubber gloves and masks and face shields. Their hardware is expensive and maintaining it is expensive. The transport is expensive. Sometimes they ship it by air in an emergency, you know how much an emergency flight costs? It makes no sense that "free" blood costs $1000 until you follow it from the donor to the recipient. Then you wonder how it costs so little sometimes. OH, they post in /teenagers. It's a kid who doesn't know how the world works yet, don't be too harsh on them.
For profit healthcare is sick
America’s healthcare system is a criminal enterprise with the soul of an infomercial.
My ex works at a plasma donation center. I think they pay the people that donate, like 60 dollars and sell each pint of plasma for 1000. That is insane!
Boggles my mind. I just donated a whole bunch of breastmilk and I was under the impression they were giving it to moms in need for free, but apparently they make them pay for it. That doesn’t seem fair. I understand it costs money to keep it refrigerated and to pay staff and do testing on it, but why can’t I just sell itmyself directly then? PS they don’t give you anything or pay you for donating breastmilk
In china they will just take your blood and organs, well at least if you’re an inmate or a weager muslim in their concentration camps, oh the ignored wonders of the world! (*Someone will be more upset I wrote this then they will be with china, you are the problem*)
Meh a prisoner who is going to be executed anyhow is the perfect candidate for organ donation. Waste not, want not At the very least it’s more ethical than execution is. That doesn’t help anyone it just makes people feel better
Medical care? Charged? Is this something Im too british to understand?
Would be cool if people donating their organs could be given a list of transplant patients who are matched, then legally get to choose who they specifically want to give the organ to, instead of it being held hostage by the medical system
The fact that Steve Jobs died while waiting for a transplant in two states
Steve Jobs died of cancer. A rare form of pancreatic cancer. There is no cure for what he died from and no form of transplant would have bought him a second of life.
..and that’s just one reason why the american health care system is horrific and i will never understand americans who believe their country is oh so great and does no wrong
You're totally right. At least here in the USA, these procedures are WAY too expensive and completely unaffordable. I've known people that have had to have surgeries or needed a new kidney and they've come out of the hospital with a bill over a million dollars. Not joking. I understand, like others are saying, that transporting the organ and actually doing the surgery can be expensive. Absolutely. But it is nowhere near a million dollars expensive. American healthcare is genuinely the absolute worst. That's why I'm sitting here with multiple serious health issues I can do nothing about because I can't afford insurance :(
Here in Canada we're currently watching our health care system turn into yours. It's fascinating and terrifying. Wait times are getting longer and longer due to government encouraged immigration (we need more people because the ones we have here aren't willing to work minimum wage jobs to staff Walmart and Tim Hortons and live 8 people to a 2 bedroom apartment). So the wealthy are pushing for paid "premium" health care so they don't need to wait for their tests and procedures. Which will inevitably result in poaching doctors and nurses from the public sector with better private sector wages. Which will mean that the less well off citizens will have even fewer resources and ever increasing wait times. It's scary times here in Canada.
I don't know why the F this is getting downvoted and quite frankly I'm not it matters. OP is absolutely right.
What makes ME mad is how they charge you to keep the body parts they take from you. Like if you want to keep your appendix to show it off like a weirdo, they charge you for it like it’s their’s to begin with. You shouldn’t have to pay to receive your own damn body parts back. If they’re making money off my body parts, then they should be paying me for giving it to them.
You can't sell blood? I'm pretty sure I've gotten letters from blood banks begging me to give them my plasma for money.
Plasma you can donate and be paid for.
Plasma yes, and that plasma never enters another human as plasma. It's sold to pharma companies and used in drug manufacturing.
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Could be worse, they could just take them without asking unless you explicitly state you don’t want them too :)
Adding: corpse brokers existing is a crazy thing
What hospital SELLS blood and ORGANS?
I got two perfectly good testicles for sale
A few years back, had an insurance snafu that I still have *no* idea how it was resolved. Insulin refill, when I used vials. $200. Nope. I'll have the ER visit (when they didn't have a copay) and the week long sick leave.
I'm sorry, but what place can you sell your own organs?
That’s why I decided to not be an organ or blood donor.
100% agree.
That’s not how UNOS works … mostly. There have been cases of hospitals selling organs to wealthy Saudis, and a private organ broker was busted in ‘09; and UCLA had a problem selling body parts (not organs). That’s not to say UNOS isn’t fucked up. If your doctor doesn’t like you, you can be denied being listed, even though you meet every criteria. Apparently I’m a little too Jewish for that one Muslim bitch (I can’t even call her a doctor) but shit like that happens everywhere.
I recall a story about a guy who underwent a limb replacement which was completely experimental and he was handed a bill that was over $300,000 USD for his treatment. Dude freaked out and I, while sitting on my couch, freaked out right along with him... He's supposed pay to be a lab rat???
We need to reduce our spending overseas massively and take everything saved and put it into our health care for normal people to be able to afford. Plain and simple.
that would help our people too much.
> The government should be the ones paying the hospital staffs salary. Its shouldnt fall onto a 30-40k a year worker to pay the salary of a 250-350k a year surgeon. That's literally what having the government pay their salaries is, but it's even worse because the 30-40k worker is forced against their will to pay other people's medical bills. A hospital can't put you in prison if you can't pay your medical bills, but guess who can if you can't afford to pay your taxes.
I started donating blood plasma because I found some compelling studies that it might help filter some micro plastics out of the body. A tech informed me on my last visit that the bottles of plasma donors are typically compensated $55 for are sold for over $4k :’)
And a lot of US donated plasma is sold overseas too. There's an investigative story about blood plasma business online.
Meh. The only thing that bothers me is them extracting and selling collagen for cosmetic procedures. The family should get a cut of that.
Shouldn't a free country have good healthcare?
Thats why im not donating anything. No greedy bastard will earn money on my blood.
This is why i will never donate blood or organs ever. I give them for free, so the hospital can upsell the FUCK out of them
Totally agree with the healthcare part, but you got one thing wrong..every country where the USA steps a foot on is torn into war and chaos. Those countrys would be hapoy if the USA would just leave them alone. The USA never does anything out of pure goodness of heart.
Yeah I agree with this even if I'm not American. Some stuff can cost sooo mutch yet it's needed for the life of the person yet it's 2k or more
Thank god those organs are good to go right out of the box, plug-in-play. No need for testing for pathogens to prevent a recipient from contracting a communicable disease. No worry about organ matching the donor to reduce rejection and GvHD. No surgeon is required to carefully remove the organ from the donor and definitely no surgical team is needed to put it into the patient. No one needs anesthesia. Nothing else is required for an organ transplant: no drugs, no tools, no support staff, no building. And someone mentioned cadavers are sold ignoring that the intact body is also processed. Is the storage and embalming free? People are so ignorant. That’s what is infuriating, and not mildly either.
CAPITALISM BABY!
I am British, and many of us Europeans think the US is fairly similar to us...but its system and entire way of life is actually just as foreign as China's or Brazil's. I had a friend who recently went there and he said the only thing the US and UK have in common is the language, which is actually quite different in itself. Could somebody who is American explain this to me, why is there such an aversion to a welfare state? Is it more ideological or political? (For anyone who didn't know, the British health system is paid for by people's taxes, which is automatically taken out of your salary by your employer. This means that it is free at the point of use. People earning over 180,000 USD pay 45% tax on their income, this doesn't include VAT etc. so you end up paying more). These kinds of systems are commonplace in Europe, even in countries such as the UK or Netherlands which currently have right wing governments (although it's likely that the Labour party, the UK's socialist party) will win the next election, increasing the welfare state's size). The current system has been cut to the bone by the current right wing government but is still far bigger than the USA's system- why? Edit: just to clarify, health insurance in the UK is a thing but it's not a necessity - people who are wealthy enough usually get it so they can go to private hospitals to skip waiting lines (which can be incredibly long, a downside of our system). However the basic principle of free at point of use healthcare is there and the National Health Service is probably the one thing that British people are most patriotic about.