re: Is giving blood a scam?

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I worked for OLOL blood bank in college. They charge for blood when they transfuse it and sell the surplus for a couple hundred a pint (ostensibly to cover their costs). When they had to buy it from for profit blood centers, it costed a lot more than a $150-200.

If less people donated blood and there were shortages, more critical patients would die, so donation helps people. If you want to donate blood, but hate capitalism, avoid donating at Red Cross (or other for profit, non-hospital blood centers) and donate directly to a hospital that has an ER and you at least cut out the middle man and his profit. If you want to take it a step further you can also direct your donation directly to a patient who has used blood and it will knock $ off their medical bill. If you don't know the name of someone that has used blood, ask the donor tech if they'll label it "direct donation" to someone that needs it.

I used to pull up names of people that needed blood and donated blood directly to them as often as my biology would allow. You have to wait 8 weeks between normal donations, but when directing your blood to a specific patient, you only have to wait 3 weeks as long as your HGB tests high enough.

I did it too often and the head nurse banned me from donating for a while, so I created a dummy account in the system and would donate in the name "Hank Hill" when out on blood drives. That account is probably still in the OLOL system.

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