A simple matter of blood money

Supervisor Clarissa McMahon came right out yesterday and said the city ought to stop fiddle-faddling around and go out and get the taxpayers’ blood. We’re all for it.

The issue cropped up before the Board of Supervisors when San Francisco General Hospital requested $9000 for blood, an emergency measure.

Kevin McGettigan, assistant superintendent of the hospital, explained that the institution has been borrowing 400 pints a month from the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank for its patients and getting only 175 or so back from the patients’ relatives and friends.

He said the Blood Bank wanted the going rate of $25 for each of the 225 pints a month.

With pardonable pride, Mr. McGettigan told the Supervisors he had solved four-fifths of the problem by “hanging up a couple of signs” in the State employment offices offering to buy blood at $5 a pint.

The hospital has been bottling up this cut-rate blood and using it to pay off its loan at the bank, said Mr. McGettigan, with what seemed to us like considerable satisfaction.

He explained that he needed the $9000 to buy 1800 pints — or enough to meet the bank payments from last November up through the end of the fiscal year.

The Blood Bank, which, it should be noted, is a nonprofit institution, has offered no objections to all this undercutting.

Mrs. McMahon herself made it clear she had nothing against Mr. McGettigan’s little price war. She said she was rising only to urge that “the city put on an intensive drive to get blood.”

“The Veterans Administration Hospital does it with great success and so do a number of other organizations,” she said. “With the help of the public press, I feel we could do equally well for our hospital.”

If successful, we figure, such a campaign would save the taxpayers $13,500 a year at the current rates. Being a small corner of the public press, we want to help. We’ve even drawn up a slogan for the campaign: “Your Money or Your Blood!”

We were worried at first that Mrs. McMahon’s modest proposal could get out of hand, with maybe every taxpayer annually receiving a Form 1040 and a case of empty Mason jars.

But we were reassured by watching the reaction of Mrs. McMahon’s colleagues on the board to her idea. It’s true they all nodded in agreement. However, we noticed that none offered Mr. McGettigan any blood. They voted unanimously to give him the money, instead.

This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle Sept. 9, 1960.

The Blood Bank, which, it should be noted, is a non-profit institution, has offered no objections to all this undercutting.