GoFundMe began as a crowdfunding site for “ideas and dreams.” As GoFundMe co-founders Andrew Ballester and his partner Brad Damphousse once said, “For life’s big moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoons, graduation gifts, and the church’s missionary efforts to needy overseas hospitals. Now, GoFundMe has become the go-to platform for patients looking to escape the nightmare of medical bills.
According to one study, the annual number of campaigns related to medical causes in the United States in 2020 was approximately 200,000, 25 times the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. Currently, more than 500 campaigns are dedicated to seeking financial support for treatment. People, primarily children, with spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic disorder. A gene therapy recently approved by pharmaceutical company Novartis for young children with the disease costs about $2.1 million for a single dose.
Perhaps the most egregious aspect of this is that crowdfunding to pay for expensive treatments is no longer considered unusual. Instead, it is becoming a normalized part of the health care system, such as getting blood tests or waiting for an appointment. Do you need a heart transplant? Start a GoFundMe and get on the waiting list. It’s widely accepted that he turns to GoFundMe when faced with bills, so in some cases, patient advocates and hospital financial aid officials recommend crowdfunding instead of going to fundraisers. There is also. My inbox and the “Bill of the Month” project (a collaboration between KFF Health News and NPR) have become a kind of complaint line for people who can’t afford their medical bills, and I’m shocked every time I hear from a patient. will do. We have been advised that GoFundMe is the best option.
GoFundMe acknowledges that patients rely on its platform. Ari Romeo, a company spokeswoman, said the most common category of fundraisers the company hosts is “medical expenses.” However, he declined to say how much of the campaign is health-related, as people who start campaigns choose their own fundraising goals. For example, if a child needs to travel to another state for treatment, they may choose the family or travel category, she said. So while the company has previously estimated that roughly a third of the funds raised on the site are related to illness and injury costs, that may be an underestimate.
Andrea Coy of Fort Collins, Colorado, turned to GoFundMe as a last resort in 2021 after an ambulance bill put her family’s finances at risk. His son Sebastian, then 1 year old, was admitted to a local hospital with pneumonia and was rushed by helicopter to Colorado Children’s Hospital in Denver when his oxygen levels dropped. REACH, the air ambulance transportation company that contracted with the hospital, was out of network and charged the family nearly $65,000 for the ride, more than $28,000 of which was paid by Coy’s insurance company, United Healthcare. Ta. Still, REACH continued to send bills to Coy’s family for the balance, and she then began calling Coy regularly to collect, to the point where she felt the company was harassing her. she told me.
Coy called the company’s human resources department, REACH, and United Healthcare for assistance in resolving the incident. She applied for financial assistance from various patient organizations, but she was repeatedly denied. Ultimately, her unpaid balance was reduced to her $5,000, but that was still in addition to her $12,000 that her family had to pay out of pocket for Sebastian’s actual medical expenses. It was more than I could afford.
That’s when the hospital’s financial aid officer suggested she try GoFundMe. But as Coy says, “I’m not an influencer,” so the appeal “only provided a little bit of temporary relief. We hit a wall.” They are in a lot of debt and want to get out of it.
In an email response, a REACH spokesperson said that due to patient privacy laws, they could not comment on specific cases, but if you boarded an ambulance before the federal No Surprises Act went into effect, the bill would He said it was legal. (The law protects patients from such air ambulance bills and goes into effect from January 1, 2022.) But a spokesperson said: “Patients are facing financial hardship. “If this is the case, we will work with patients to find a fair solution.” What is “fair” and whether that includes asking for an additional $5,000 over and above the $28,000 insurance benefit for transporting a sick child is, of course, subjective.
Research shows that in many ways, GoFundMe tends to perpetuate the socioeconomic disparities that already impact health care costs and debt. If you are a celebrity or part of a circle of friends who have money, your crowdfunding campaign is much more likely to be successful than if you are middle class or poor. The family of former Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton started a fundraiser on another platform, *spotfund, to raise money for her, who had recently been admitted to the intensive care unit without insurance, and quickly raised nearly $460,000. Donations were collected. The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage based on a medical history (dozens of orthopedic surgeries) or charging abnormally high rates. (forbidden to do so).
And even the most robust funding can feel inadequate when you consider America’s health care costs. If you’re looking for help buying a $2 million drug, even tens of thousands of dollars may be a drop in the bucket.
Rob Solomon, who served as CEO of GoFundMe from 2015 to March 2020, was named one of Time magazine’s 50 most influential people in the medical field in 2018. I hope more than anything that it doesn’t become a GoFundMe category.” “The system is terrible,” he told KFF Health News. “It needs to be rethought and rebuilt. Politicians are failing us. Healthcare companies are failing us. They are failing us.” is a reality.”
But despite the lofty ambitions of its original vision, GoFundMe is a private, for-profit company. In 2015, the founders sold a majority stake to a group of venture capital investors led by Accel Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures. And when I asked about medical costs being the most common reason for GoFundMe campaigns, the company’s current CEO, Tim Cadogan, said high medical costs and financial cruelty are probably what made his company famous. He appeared to be less critical of the health care system than his predecessor.
“Our mission is to help people help each other,” he said. “We are not and cannot be the solution to complex, systemic problems that are best solved through meaningful public policy.”
That’s true. Despite the site’s hopeful atmosphere, most campaigns only generate a fraction of the money owed. A 2017 study from the University of Washington found that most health spending campaigns in the United States fail to meet their goals, and some raise little or no money. Campaign revenue averages about 40% of the target amount, and there is evidence that revenue, measured as a percentage of goal, worsens over time.
Carol Justice, a recently retired public servant and longtime union member in Portland, Oregon, turned to GoFundMe after facing an unexpectedly large bill for bariatric surgery at Oregon Health & Science University.
After her health insurance company paid the $15,000 maximum for the surgery, she was scheduled to pay the remainder of her deductible, which was about $1,000. She didn’t understand that the cap didn’t mean she had to pay the difference if an in-network hospital charged more.
And it did, leaving her with an $18,000 bill that she had to pay in one-time or $1,400-a-month increments, “which was more than my mortgage,” she said. “I was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy or losing my car and house.” She called the hospital’s financial aid office multiple times, but many went unanswered and she was not eligible for assistance. The promise to “get back to you” about whether there was one was never fulfilled.
So Justice said her health coach (provided by the city of Portland) suggested starting a GoFundMe. The campaign netted her about $1,400 in one monthly payment, including her $200 from a health coach and her $100 from her aunt. She dutifully sent her donations directly to the hospital.
The hospital system said in an email response that it cannot discuss individual cases, but that “financial assistance information is readily available to patients and can be accessed at any point in the patient’s journey to OHSU. ” he said. Starting in early 2019, OHSU will remove barriers for patients most in need by offering expedited screening for financial aid and awarding financial aid without the need for an application process if certain criteria are met. I worked on it. ”
This story has a happy ending. Desperate, Ms. Justice went to the hospital and placed herself in the financial aid office, where she had a tearful meeting with a hospital representative who, given her finances, was unable to pay the bill. I decided there was no need to pay.
“I was going through everything and I was just crying,” she said. She wants to give back to those who donated to the GoFundMe campaign, she said. But so far, the hospital has not refunded the $1,400.
