Idk it depends, I got billed close to 1000€ by German healthcare after damaging a ligament despite me having a valid EHIC because “you’re not a German resident so you have to pay”, it took forever dealing with my own healthcare system who refunded me and I assume chased it up with your system, but still they’re a bunch of scammers
I don’t donate, I’m phobic of needles and I disagree with the commercialization of the industry. The fact that my blood likely won’t be used by someone who needs it and instead will be up charged to the highest bidder sickens me.
So this letter board is clearly advertising Canadian blood services. Canada’s healthcare system could use a lot of work, but it is far from the dumpster fire that American healthcare is.
If you want to shitpost about this and assume as Americans do that America is the only place, maybe try to find an image that isn’t so obviously from a country with universal healthcare.
in America you donate blood for free, and your blood gets sold to the hospitals for 100-400 dollars. then the hospitals charge the patients who receive it even more than that.
Canadian Blood Services (CBS) says it plans to introduce the new behaviour-based questionnaire approach “no later” than Sept. 30. It will apply to both blood and plasma donations, outside of Quebec.
It will mean that when all donors are screened before rolling up their sleeves, they’ll be asked whether they have recently engaged in anal sex in the context of new or multiple sexual partners within the last few months. If they have, they would not be able to donate until they had gone three months without engaging in that activity.
I thought that change (2022) was the end of the discussion.
Tragically, no. I thought so too until quite recently. They did improve things but it’s pretty rough
Since a viral load can be reduced to zero through medication, HIV-positive folks can be non contagious. The use of condoms, even if the viral load is not suppressed through medication, seriously reduces the risk of HIV transmission. They don’t ask questions about condom usage. To be clear I’m not suggesting that HIV-positive folks should be donating blood, just that the actual factors for transmission are way more specific than “butt stuff = AIDS” the way that they imply. The result of this is still excluding queer folks end up getting excluded with language that’s less overtly hostile and more implicitly hostile.
The screening doesn’t exclude people based how many partners a person has slept with, or whether they have used protection (both of which are massive risk factors for transmission) and instead basically forbids anyone who engages in anal sex from donating blood.
I don’t know about Canada; but over here you only get those questions if they deem you a high risk group and; depending on your responses; if they think you’re gay and had sex in the last year, you’re not allowed to donate.
It sounds like Canada is only okay w gays donating blood if they’re in a heteronormative couple, which; I’m willing to bet; is as a depressingly tiny minority of gay men like it is in the United States.
Sometimes, the smart prejudice is subtle or hidden in the details so that it’s more palatable to the rest and/or to confuse those who don’t look too closely.
Donate anyway. It saves a life. The bills can go unpaid for that person, but without your blood donation they could die. Dying is worse than an unpaid medical bill. Some generous billionaire could come along one day and pay off huge medical debts for patients, on a whim. Some billionaire can’t bring your dead body back to life.
Are you saying that you have so much medical debt that you’re a slave to it? Blood transfusion costs a patient about $250 on average. High rent, rising gasoline prices, and inflation on cost of food makes you a slave. A $250 blood transfusion doesn’t make you a slave, especially when you live in a state that requires you to have health coverage and offers you free state medical insurance if you can’t afford anything else. If you’re going to complain about the high cost of medical care, please complain about MRI costs, without medical insurance, in a state that won’t cover you. I once paid $8000 for an abdominal MRI while out of state. It took me years to pay it off. That, you can complain about, or perhaps the fact that they expected me to return six months later for another one (which I didn’t). You shouldn’t complain about the cost of a blood transfusion that you may never need. Heck, you’re lucky if they have your blood type. I bled out in the hospital in 2012, and no one there had my blood type. There were no pints available for me. They let me lay in a hospital room with a hemoglobin level of 4, waiting for me to regain consciousness. I had to pay the medical bill for using their room to recover! Be mad about that.
No I’m saying debt is a means by which many people are locked into their financial circumstances and never manage to pull themselves out of poverty.
If your entire life is spent working to pay off a life debt - that’s not including paying to eat, drink, sleep under a roof - how is that different from slavery?
Congrats, you got out of yours. Now maybe have a little empathy for those who can’t.
No, I only focus on not passing out and wondering if the bag is warm. If they are in a situation where they need a transfusion it will most likely be covered as an emergency. I miss donating blood, they used to give me a stress ball as a gift every time I went, I had to stop recieving them after the drawer I was keeping them in couldn’t hold any more.
Lol NO. Where I live we actually HELP people who need medical attention for free. Health care is included in our society. You can be in hospital for a month and will only get a bill somewhere between zero and a few hundred euros, and that will only be for some extras that you used during your stay. like cable tv or wifi or extra meals and such things
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