I am glad to see that this issue is starting to get some traction. I voiced my outrage about it a few weeks ago:
Health Minister John Della Bosca has made a lame attempt to justify the ludicrous charging for blood decision. Really, you can only hope he doesn’t believe this nonsense. I’ve also written to the Red Cross telling them that I will no longer donate blood when as a privately insured patient I might get charged for blood if and when I need it (or have the ‘costs passed on to me’ as they say). If there is now to be a market for blood then us donors ought to get paid as well. That’s the inevitable logic of the Della Bosca decision and he needs to face up to it and start funding the Red Cross to buy blood. Australia’s unique approach to blood donation has probably been dealt a fatal blow. It’s regrettable, but there it is.
The Della Bosca rationalisation is basically a cute pea and thimble trick, the sort that bureaucrats are so good at coming up with. The fact is that private hospital patients will pay twice – as taxpayers and as patients. The notion that public hospitals already pay is just silly. They don’t ‘pay’ for anything they are taxpayer-funded. Della Bosca’s persistent anti-capitalist, anti-corporate line these days is also a little disturbing – he does realise we live in a free market economy doesn’t he? Despite being the faction of Paul Keating, the NSW Right has never really understood economics, as you can see from the parlous condition of this state’s economy.
I didn’t hear back from the Red Cross but the SMH this morning reports that I am far from alone in giving up on the blood donor system that Della Bosca is destroying:
THE NSW Blood Bank, already struggling to meet demand, is facing a revolt by donors angry at the State Government’s plans to charge private hospitals for the blood they have given.
A “large number” of donors had contacted the Red Cross call centre to express their “intention to discontinue giving blood”, the blood bank spokesman, Nicholas McGowan, said yesterday.
Federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has rightly stepped in and sought ‘clarification’ from NSW, she needs to immediately go further and tell the discredited Rees Government that its double-dipping on blood donations is illegal, un-Australian and simply not on.
The problem for the Red Cross is that their entire marketing pitch is that Australia has a unique donation system – ‘blood is given freely and received freely’. This decision destroys that brand promise.
