Changes to the requirements for donating blood coupled with the pandemic have led to a drop-off in the number of teens and young adults donating blood.
It was a white T-shirt bearing the likeness of Snoopy wearing shades and leaning effortlessly against the iconic American Red Cross logo that prompted a surge in blood donations in the spring of 2023.
“Be cool. Give blood,” the shirt urged. The message — on young people, anyway — was effective. More than 70,000 people under age 35 responded to the call, rolling up their sleeves and giving blood in exchange for the coveted tees.
The need for blood is urgent. Over the holidays, the Red Cross had 7,000 fewer units of blood available than were needed by hospitals, said Dr. Eric Gehrie, the executive medical director of the American Red Cross. The organization speculated it would need about 8,000 additional donations every week in January to ensure that hospitals are fully supplied, he added.
I know it is bad but i completely understand why.
A group of people who cannot afford health care and are at risk of crippling debt from medical issues are reluctant to donate blood.
Especially when they sell it?
Exactly.
Scenario: A person regularly donates blood for years and receives no benefit from it.
Later they need to receive transfusions due to surgery or medical emergency.
They are charged several thousand dollars for the transfusions, the same amount as a person who has never donated.
What is their motivation to donate again?
There is very little.
I wonder if the same trend exists here in the UK or other countries with national health service.
I must say paying people to give blood seems like a horrible idea, it incentivizers people with reasons not to give blood such as illness or drug use to lie. Sadly testing and screening isn’t very effective so it would likely cause problems.
I’m from a country with universal health care that is paid via a tax levy that all pay.
We are not paid to donate but we are also provided transfusions for no charge as well.
We do not have the issues mentioned in this article.
We (India) have free healthcare for the poor and subsidised healthcare for everyone else. Blood will therefore be free / discounted at a government hospital, but private hospitals can charge money. Donors must not be paid (including gifts, coupons, etc.) in either case, but some hospitals give a card or token saying you get priority if you ever need blood at that hospital.
Being a selfless person and knowing you’ve helped someone?
Yes, the warm glow of altruistic service to the community is a strong one but it is often hard to maintain in the face of looming bankruptcy due to medical debt.
Did that change? At one time if you donated blood, you didn’t charge if you later needed blood…
Yeah that isn’t a thing now. I’ve never heard of it. Was that like the '60s?
We have also been taught that everything comes at a price and everything is a product. Even ourselves. I can see why being asked to give away something for free in this context just seems bizarre, as necessary as it is.
In a society that bleeds us for every cent it can get its claws on, why would we be expected to turn around and donate anything?
We’ve been trained that nothing happens without payment… if you want my blood, make an offer.
It’s always young people who’re asked to step up. Again and again. Save the environment whilst corporations fuck us; care for the aging population; buy a house and contribute to the economy; fight in proxy wars over a politician’s pride. And now it’s give blood whilst still being charged extortionate medical costs. Why don’t the older generations step up for a change?
Did you bother to even read the (very short) article? Basically the whole thing is about how people age 40-65 donate more than half of all blood in the country, and that the significant declines in blood donations has been in the under 30 demographic.
With less blood donors, blood becomes more expensive and therefore increases medical costs. As the most generous donation demographics continue to age, those that can still qualify to give blood decreases.
I don’t think they were talking about how older generations need to donate more. My take on the article and their comment was that younger generations are being asked to “step up” and help the country/people, but in return get shafted on life.
House and food prices doubled over the past 2 years while pay stagnated. Medical bills soar without any signs of universal healthcare being implemented in my lifetime. Student loan debt was temporarily deferred, but now might even need to be reversed with interest. The most the Red Cross can do is say, “We’ll give you a shirt if you donate! And maybe a chance to win Super Bowl tickets!” But in return hospitals can charge $219 for the blood.
Overall it’s demoralizing. While people should donate because it’s needed, it’s just a symptom of a larger problem of young people (adults participating in society though) being expected to keep giving without having their voice heard.
I hear what you’re saying, but young people like us not donating blood only ends up screwing us later. We’re not hurting “the olds” by not donating blood. The point of the article is that when people donate blood when they’re young, they tend to continue doing it more throughout their lives.
If you’re looking for personal rewards, it’s a free way to reduce the microplastics in your blood stream, of which young people tend to have more. And it’s just the right thing to do. This seems like a fairly poignant example of misplaced, impotent intergenerational anger.
Not donating blood isn’t how this gets resolved. But, I do understand how symbolically this feels weird. Nevertheless, as I recall, people under 40 are more likely to suffer injuries involving massive blood loss (guns being the #1 cause of death for people under 18 surely plays into that), and reducing the available blood supply doesn’t seem to get us anywhere.
Oh, sorry. I’m not saying I think its a conscious decision to screw people over or that people only donate since they get something out of it. I think it’s just one more social responsibility that gets lost under the rest of everything going on.
I’m hearing it better now and generally agree. Thanks for clarifying. It sucks that it is that way, and it sucks that things being sucky makes good people more sucky. But I’m not blaming, just bummed.
Student loan debt deferment was a joke as it merely shifted the problem down the road.
The system that charges 70k for a four year degree still exists, maybe we should take care of the gushing artery instead of continually giving unsustainable blood bags to them. No pun intended for the current thread.
Why? So when we need it they can sell it back to us for $10k/liter?
Seriously. It’s a fucking racket. Gimmie a slice of that cheese.
This is why I “donate” plasma instead. Still helping people, can do it more often, and my first month after a long break gave me $600 in 6 visits
It’s gonna drop down to maybe $150-250 in the next month but it’ll still be at least $25 for an hour out of my day twice a week.
Would be nice if there were no monetary system so it weren’t so exploitative but hey, I’ll keep dreaming
Sure, I’ll donate when I’m not working 70 hour weeks and actually have some time to.
they told me I’m a plague-ridden queer and that I’m not welcome. Happy to accommodate.
Pay me. Well. This is like restaurants paying $9 complaining that nobody wants to work. If I go to the ER and get an aspirin it’s like $3k. But they want my blood for free. How much would it cost if I needed a pint or two of blood in the ER?
They often do offer gift cards. If you were serious about what you said you’d know that
Maybe in some areas. I’ve donated many times and never received anything. I haven’t donated in the last three years though. I’m officially in the pay me camp now. I can’t afford healthcare.
Area and time dependent yes, I’d get them occasionally before red cross spam calling me chased me off.
I’ve donated for decades in multiple states and the closest thing to payment I’ve ever gotten was a $5 off coupon for Bass Pro Shop.
The young people also need free medical care and education. No wonder number of donors is dropping. When you are suppose to give something away they plea your goodness of the heart and helping others. When you need transfusions it’s several thousands of dollars thank you.
pay $98 to see my GP to write a therapeutic phlebotomy order so I can then go to Red Cross to have them take my blood and throw it straight in the bin.
My blood has too much iron so it can’t be donated.
In my 20s I donated every 8 weeks on the dot. My iron levels were low enough for my blood to be accepted and the regular donations kept them within a healthy range for me and a healthy range for the blood recipient. But now days I can’t seem to maintain low enough levels for 8 weeks to be able to donate.
The kicker is that I’m still on the mailing lists so I get multiple texts a week asking me to come in and donate.
After the therapeutic phlebotomy you can’t do a normal blood donation for 8 weeks even if your levels are fine, but my iron is usually already too high by week 6, so at no point do I have the opportunity to donate. I’ve tried getting two TP orders back to back so I can go around the 5 or 6 week mark, but my levels aren’t high enough so I can only get the TP orders every 12 weeks or so anyway.
Other than iron, my blood is fine, and I’m a rare and in demand blood type too, I wish there was some way they could filter the iron out.
I’m sick of paying money to have my blood thrown away only to get Texts from Red Cross asking for my blood to be donated.
I’ve donated only couple of years and then decided to give up since hospitals, even with social insurance, sell my blood to other hospitals and are making a bank. I’ll happily donate to whoever needs my silly AB+ type, but giving it to others to sell, I want some of the benefits.
Am not sure what TP is, but it sucks they would just throw the blood out. Can’t they at least extract plasma out of it or something?
TP is therapeutic phlebotomy, basically modern day blood letting to treat hemochromatosis.
They can’t extract the plasma because the equipment that does that is designed to be connected back into the donor’s system to return their red blood cells, and the red blood cells is what I need to get rid of. They dont have any legal way of just, not hooking me back up to get the red cells back.
But it is silly, because surely you could just hook the “return tubes” up to a bag that then gets thrown out? There just isn’t a policy or procedure that allows it. Or maybe there’s a fundamental problem with the final blood product I don’t understand as a layperson.
That’s really odd indeed. Then again when I got PRP treatment for my joints they tossed everything away apart from plasma.
Weren’t gay men barred entirely? Yeah, I was considered “high risk” by category all those years despite being squeaky clean. Big regrets now, huh.
I’ll do it but it will cost you 1,000 a month or 10,500 a year… And I might not go every month…but you still have to pay.
We live in a subscription based society after all.
Bloody hilarious
Did you just
I do more than enough for my privilege level. I’m not doing more until my level of freedom is higher than “if someone at work doesn’t like me, I’m kicked out of decent living”.
Used to donate, would get about 15 calls a day asking me to come donate the next day. Not sure if daily blood donations is sustainable.
Exactly this, my job has called in that donation bus a few times. I always go because its an excuse to not work for an hour and I get a cookie.
After the first report came in I got some very helpful blood info. After that it got frustrating, as donating blood is very much in support of the public good, but the org that handles it will turn around and sell it (as part of someones hospital bill), then spam you with emails and calls asking for more…
Yeah, I stopped giving blood because of the constant harassing phone calls.
I’d tell them I just gave and they’d tell me “go to this other location they won’t know”
Red Cross?
Yup, they came off like vampires after a while.
I donated blood once because I needed to know my blood type and it was the cheapest way to find out. The Red Cross sent harassing phone calls for YEARS after that. It stopped after I told them I just returned from a three week trip to Mali.
The day my mother passed, she received at least 3 bags of blood. All it brought her was a few unconscious hours. I don’t have the words to describe how overwhelmingly thankful i was that day and still am for those individuals who gave their blood to my mother.
And if they charged anyone for that blood, those three people who donated should have been compensated fairly.
If the blood was free, then no compensation is needed.
I don’t want people getting money for their blood.
I don’t want people paying for health care at all but I reject your premise that paying people to donate would help. Times are bad and the last thing we need is sick people donating or people over donating
I’m not saying we should pay people to donate.
I’m saying IF the blood is sold/billed/etc to the person receiving it, then the donors should receive financial compensation. The world has jaded people as corporations suck every last cent out of us (usually through subscriptions). Not that this would help drive donations, it would merely make it fairer.
Look at Henrietta Lacks - there should have been massive financial compensation if anything that came about from her cells was sold. Do you think those companies would turn around and give out whatever they developed for free? Fuck no.
The world has gone from “let me help you” to “fuck you, pay me”. I’m not saying I agree with it but I anbsolutely understand it.
I’ll donate when I can afford to get treatment for the condition that makes me anemic.
I can’t even afford health insurance, I need to keep all my blood inside me.
