GoFundMe Is A Health-Care Utility Now: The Atlantic

[appalachiablue]

- 'GoFundMe Is a Health-Care Utility Now,' The Atlantic, Jan. 5, 2024. Resorting to crowdfunding to pay medical bills has become so routine, in some cases health professionals recommend it.

GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ideas and dreams,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “for life’s important moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need.

Now GoFundMe has become a go-to for patients trying to escape medical-billing nightmares.

One study found that, in 2020, the number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes—about 200,000—was 25 times higher than the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. More than 500 campaigns are currently dedicated to asking for financial help for treating people, mostly kids, with spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic condition. The recently approved gene therapy for young children with the condition, by the drugmaker Novartis, costs about $2.1 million for the single-dose treatment.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of all this is that paying for expensive care with crowdfunding is no longer seen as unusual; instead, it is being normalized as part of the health system, like getting blood work done or waiting on hold for an appointment. Need a heart transplant? Start a GoFundMe in order to get on the waiting list. Resorting to GoFundMe when faced with bills has become so accepted that in some cases, patient advocates and hospital financial-aid officers recommend crowdfunding as an alternative to being sent to collections.

My inbox and the Bill of the Month project (run by KFF Health News, where I am the senior contributing editor, and NPR) have become a kind of complaint desk for people who can’t afford their medical bills, and I’m gobsmacked every time a patient tells me they’ve been advised that GoFundMe is their best option...

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/02/gofundme-health-care-hospitals/677353/

[kozar]

1. Yes , i agree.

When I did gofundme, DU members gave LilBit and I, 3k.you, saved us, LilBit ate.
Now, gofundme, seems to be a job.
As much as I, want to give back,
I can't, I don't know, which requests are real

[pandr32]

2. A sad reality.

If I cannot work out the climbing cost of my treatment injection I may consider doing a GoFundMe myself. The copay is now almost $3,000 every four weeks. I can get a grant, but it requires jumping through hoops and will give me only $2,000 total for the year. Whoop-de-do!
🥺

[VMA131Marine]

3. What if we spread the costs around by crowd funding the whole country

The government could run it, they have a really efficient system called Medicare to use as a model.

We could call it Universal Healthcare …

Oh, wait …

[LisaM]

4. This has always bugged me about crowdfunding.

People will fork over $100 to a total stranger whose story might not even be true, but balk at paying that much more in income tax. Government can take care of things like healthcare more efficiently with a consistent revenue stream, but the idea of taxation has been vilified. Another thing that really disturbs me is that it allows people to pick and choose what they consider charity, while turning a blind eye to real needs in poverty and education and healthcare.

Of course I have donated to people I personally know who are in need, but we only need to look at the Mary Lou Retton case to see how f**ked up this approach is. Imagine how much farther that half million+ could have gone if it was tax revenue.