Crowdfunding healthcare

My husband died 10 years ago, and I can still quite vividly recall how we would sit there, laughing, while going through the Medicare/Blue Cross itemized statements - and in the face of cancer, we did in fact laugh plenty - about how $100,000 worth of whatevers could end up with "you may owe $14.92" as the bottom line.

Jim received an awful lot of healthcare during the final two years of his life - multiple surgeries, multiple rounds of radiation, multiple rounds of chemo, multiple nurse visits while on home hospice, a couple of ambulance rides, crazy drugs delivered to the door. 

At one point, I knew what the "total" was, but I've long forgotten it. Was it a half-million dollars? A cool million?

All I know is that, other than paying for Medicare (painlessly, invisibly taken out of Social Security) and the monthly Blue Cross premium for supplemental insurance, I don't think it cost us anything. Maybe $14.92.

But I know that everyone isn't on Medicare, everyone doesn't have/can't afford gold-standard "Cadillac" insurance.

Those who are uninsured, under-insured, have big gaps between what insurance pays and what the medical system bills, get lost in some "out of network" technicality, can go broke if they suffer the ill luck to have a catastrophic health crisis. People lose their homes, lose their savings, lose the kids' college fund, end up up to their eyeballs in debt.

What a terrible system....What a colossal disgrace. 

So it's not surprising that people turn to GoFundMe and other crowdfunding platforms to pay for the healthcare that's impoverishing them.

The recent "go for the gold" fundraiser to help Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton take care of her hospital bills put the spotlight on crowdfunding. (Retton's family used spotfund, not the more popular GoFundMe.)

Retton raised nearly half-a-million dollars to pay for a lengthy hospitalization for "a rare form of pneumonia." She initially asked for $50K, but the money kept rolling in, up to the tune of $459K.  

Of course, most people aren't Mary Lou Retton. They're not America's sweetheart, with a lot of fans out there who are willing to (unquestionably) donate. 

But because of Retton's brand and profile, her fundraiser eventually attracted plenty of scrutiny. She's living in a multimillion house? She doesn't have insurance (claiming she can't afford it because of pre-existing conditions)? She's an anti-vaxxer? Is she also an anti-Obamacare person?  

Not that it's any of our HIPAA-pickin' business, but might this "very rare form of pneumonia" be covid-related? If she was only asking for $50K worth of help, where did the $409K overage go? 

Cagily, Retton and family are playing mum. But she has certainly suffered a reputational and brand hit.

But the ML Retton sitch sure points our how healthcare can really cost you, and how our system of paying for insurance is confusing and convoluted. (Just ask anyone looking for insurance to supplement Medicare.)

And if something really bad happens to you, even with great insurance you can still get clobbered. (Just ask anyone with a family member with ALS or the like.)

So people are, increasingly, resorting to crowdfunding. 

GoFundMe was founded in 2010, and is now the largest crowdfunding platform. 

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. (This is from an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal that I saw in The Atlantic, which is subscription-only. However, it can be accessed for free on KFF Health News.)

Hundreds of thousands of folks use GoFundMe to seek help with medical costs. It's the platform's #1 fundraising category, accounting for one-third of the money raised through GFM. This is certainly not surprising given the insane cost of medical care. In fact, we've gotten to the point where "patient advocates and hospital financial-aid officers recommend crowdfunding as an alternative to being sent to collections."

What people are looking for ranges from a pretty modest amount ($2K or less) up to hundreds of thousands, or even a million+ for those hoping to pay for million-dollar treatments for rare disorders. Not surprisingly, many campaigns raise nothing or next to nothing. After all, raising money on a crowdfunding platform will only work if you have a good network to tap, are social media savvy, get some news coverage, attract the attention of someone with a big following. (A recent GoFundMe to support the family of the woman killed at the KC Chiefs Superbowl celebration raised nearly $400K. It took off because the event was in the national news and because Taylor Swift donated $100K.)

It's pretty appalling that crowdfunding has become such a mainstream and prominent means of taking care of medical bills.

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. 

Yep. I know we can't keep everyone alive forever, and technological and pharmaceutical innovations are going to make things more and more (unsupportedly) expensive. I know that those who can afford it should expect to pay some part of the costs, even if we have blue-ribbon insurance. Still, there's something seriously f'd up about our atrocious approach to paying for medical care.