someone piss in your cereal this morning? the first two sentences, i agree with. and that's what i do.
if i ever see you bitching about the cost of health care, i am going to light you up. MY point is what those sons-a-bitches charge the poor motherfucker at the end of the line for what they are donated. you can NOT look at the money the CEO takes and honestly look me in the eye, and tell me that they are NOT gouging people.
as far as "thick skull bastards", how is that "going along with the status quo" working out for you?
i'll take that as you are ok with the end user getting raped for something they need THAT WAS DONATED in the first place. people donating blood do so under the guise of it goes to people that need it, NOT that the people that need it are going to get bent over a table and drilled deep.
put a sign up at every donation point, stating exactly what the end user is going to have to pay for their donation, and see what happens. BECAUSE IT WILL PISS PEOPLE OFF when they see the truth.
Didn't have any cereal, and the Folgers is tasty as usual. You're missing the point of my sarcasm though: There is no solution to the blood transfusion process that would work on the scale we need it to.
Option One: Corporate process that is for profit would only spike blood transfusion costs from a few hundred per unit to a thousand plus, because profits don't come out of thin air and investors don't put money where it doesn't grow. How about putting blood on the commodity market where its value fluctuates on a supply/demand basis? The money to pay people for those selling blood has to come from somewhere, and would that spur the healthy to sell it more? Would you or any typical healthy middle class worker hit the blood bank to donate once a week to get $50? I drop $10 in gas just to go to town and back, $40 to go to the city where a blood donation center actually is, so not going to be an incentive to me. The bulk of people it would be an incentive for would be the ones whom their blood is rejected through the testing phase (if it's even caught), causing further waste of resources and losses of profits.
Option Two: ARC and the rest give the hospitals the blood at no charge. How do they fund the process costs to get it from vein to vein? Phlebotomists don't work for free (although some would argue they damn near do), cold storage is expensive, as is sterilized equipment and lab equipment and the personnel to run it costs just as much. Dominoes may still have free delivery, but blood doesn't. The entire process requires full time employees, because volunteers at that level of licensure don't have time to give to themselves, much less time to give to others. So when the RC is about to go under, Congress bails them out, we still end up paying for it.
Option Three: The government nationalizes the process, and we all fucking pay for it. I don't need to expand on why this is such a bad fucking idea.
Option Four: My sarcasm filled unicorn tears solution of a full volunteer foundation to fulfill the needs for blood transfusions. We all know it is a pipe dream.
So what is the solution you suggest? To me, there really isn't one beyond the present status quo, despite it not being what we would consider completely acceptable, but bitching about it and clamoring for it being paid for on the front end or free on the back end isn't the fix.
As for health care costs? Yep, they're a lot and one thing I fully support is getting federal funds out of the industry's pockets, starting with no more money for fake shots that don't work, as well as paying for the massive costs of medications that marginally/don't work either but the FDA gives a back room thumbs up to that we all know is corrupt. But changing the blood donate/payment process is a tiny blip in fixing high health care costs.
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