These initiatives elicit howls of protests from the sort of people who can't bear the thought of privatizing public schools, and who would prefer to put an end to private medicine altogether. They are outraged at the thought that the rich and powerful might fare better than the poor. But the rich and powerful already fare better in everything, including blood. Presidents and popes do not draw their blood from the same homogenized vats you and I draw from. And though people donate blood for free, it is already very expensive at the other end.
Hospitals sell blood components for hundreds of dollars a pint.
There is something marvelously egalitarian in the thought that the pauper's blood will be mixed with the prince's, both coming and going. But it is also time to give up our warm illusions. We do need charitable soup kitchens, in the blood business as elsewhere. But what we need far more is a market that encourages private farms at one end and permits dinner at Lutece at the other. Not because we want the poor to have worse, but because we want them to have better, along with everyone else.