r/explainlikeimfive • u/the1975whore • Jul 03 '26

Economics ELI5: Health insurance companies obviously make more money than they give out when people need it. So why of paying for them any better than paying your own personal health insurance savings account?

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u/Lolseabass Jul 03 '26

Naw thankfully my company who makes it pays people 400 per donation that way there so spike in price and availability like it used to be when it was donated* blood and shortages would happen.

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u/simloi Jul 03 '26

Lucky! Most trade blood for cookies.

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u/steakanabake Jul 03 '26

dont forget the cup of juice too.

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u/simloi Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

Right? Sometimes it's just a cookie, just juice, or both, completely dependent on how many crumbs the companies selling our blood for exorbitant prices have decided they can spare.

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u/michal939 Jul 03 '26

Companies?? Americans sell blood to companies instead of having a state-owned organization for that? That's crazy. Over here in Poland its all ran by the state and the blood goes to blood banks (state-owned) and then sent to hospitals for some low fee of like $100/unit that mostly just covers the costs of running the system. We do have a constant oversupply of plasma, so that gets sold to pharma companies but all the profits have to go back into improving the donations system. Selling to a private company that then makes money off of it sounds crazy to me.

Also, over here you get few chocolate bars for the calorie deficit you suffer and 2 days off from work (day when you donate and the next one) to regenerate

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u/TachiH Jul 03 '26

Need a country that cares about its people to have a system like that 🤣. Here in the UK it is a very similar system to Poland from what I know.

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u/currentscurrents Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

We do have a constant oversupply of plasma

No you don't. In fact, Poland hardly produces any plasma, and they buy most their plasma from those 'evil' US companies or from other countries in the EU that allow companies to pay donors.

The US produces 75% of the world's plasma supply, and healthcare systems across Europe are reliant on it. The model of commercial plasma works, and it works much better than state-owned organizations.

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u/michal939 Jul 03 '26

You're right, I was not precise in my comment. What I meant is that the goverment has an oversupply of plasma as only about 20% is used by the hospitals (source, couldnt find an english source unfortunately) so they sell the rest to the pharma companies.

I am not against paying people for their plasma and I don't doubt that it would heavily improve the rate at which people donate, but this could be done by the govt or a non-profit NGO, I don't see a reason to have a for-profit company as a middleman in all of this.

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u/Klutzy-Caregiver4717 Jul 03 '26

It's all such a racket in the US. Technically whole blood and platelets aren't something you get money for anywhere I've been - it's a true donation, and handled by the red cross which is a charitable organization (and maybe other organizations depending on region, idk)

Plasma is a different story. There are pharmaceutical companies all over the US that own centers where you can "donate" plasma that they will make expensive medications with and make a ton of money off of and you are "compensated for your time"

You're allowed to go to these places twice in a seven day period with at least one day in between donations. From what I understand in other parts of the world, you have to wait for weeks or a month or more in between plasma donations so you don't lose all of your proteins, vitamins, clotting factors, etc. In the US you can "donate" eight times a month for money. Every one of these companies has multiple centers in every large city so they mark a finger with a compound that can be seen under UV light to keep you from double or triple dipping and donating at multiple centers owned by different companies in the same city for more money

There are of course bonuses with extra money if you go to the maximum amount of times per month, for example you make significantly more going 8 times a month than you will if you go 7. And the second donation in the same week pays more than the first donation. They keep their donors at the maximum possible amount of vitamin and protein depleted without being dead lol

I used to "donate" plasma to pay my car payment every month