Hospitals charge people for blood transfusions.. and organs transplants can be tens of thousands of dollars.. i find it hard to believe that the surgery itself would cost that much. My fear is that the institutions that collect them sell them to the hospitals to make money.. in turn forcing the hospital to charge the patient for it as well.. or even just the hospital charging for it for profit. Does anyone know how this works?
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What hospital charges for that?!
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At least in the US, unless you go to some dodgy place, they’re usually harvested in a hospital. Hospitals are part of a national organ database and that organization ( which is nonprofit I think) has the list of those needing organs and their medical matching info. That’s who generally decides where they go and no one is paid for them. In the US any surgery is very expensive and transplants are complicated surgeries, hence the high charges.
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You have to keep in mind there’s a difference between parts and labor. I have no idea how much, if anything, a recipient pays for the actual organ/blood. However, there’s still a lot of work involved in getting it from the donor to the recipient and I understand installation can be especially expensive.
It is seen as unethical to buy blood from individuals in the US. As such legally any blood that has money paid to the donor has to be marked as such. So hospitals won’t buy it cause they don’t want the bad PR. It’s too close to having poor people selling body parts for money. Blood plasma though squeaks by that marking law and those places are definitely sketch.
There’s some legitimate argument that paying for blood makes it so that people with something like a disease that makes them ineligible to donate will lie. Plasma isn’t as much of a concern because it’s heavily processed to get the useful bits out of it.
So basically blood has to be donated because people can’t pay for it and make money. It is absolutely sold by the guys who get the donations. 100%. For stacks of money.
I actually work in transplant surgery specifically. I think the premise of your question is so off-base that I find it difficult to answer. There seem to be a lot of assumptions here that are vastly incorrect.
First things first, hospitals charge entities called “payors” for blood transfusions, transplants, and all forms of medical care. A payor is an insurance company most often, and less often the Medicare/Medicaid system. In even fewer cases, the bill is passed directly to the patient, which I think is what you’re talking about. Let me be clear, there isn’t a health care facility in the US that goes after the patient first – there’s simply very little point to go after someone who is extremely unlikely to be wealthy enough to pay those bills, so we either charge a payor or *do our best to help you acquire insurance*.
Second, an organ transplant can actually cost upwards of $200,000, plus whatever preoperative or postoperative care is involved.
Third. The institutions that coordinate and transport human organs are, by law, either not-for-profit organizations or government entities. They make exactly enough to keep the lights on and slowly expand their services, but that’s it.
Fourth, let’s discuss profit. I mentioned this phrase earlier: not-for-profit. A not-for-profit organization or entity makes money above their operational costs by definition, but in turn spends that money on expanding their organization, also by design.
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