Medical fundraisers account for 1 in 3 of the website’s campaigns and bring in more money than any other GoFundMe category. Americans’ confidence they can afford health care is slipping, some say.
Fundraising for medical expenses leads this crowdfunding website and, according to its chief executive, highlights a deep national need to address the high costs of health care.
From Medicare dental coverage to drug prices to fetal tissue research, the panelists answer listeners’ questions. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Stephanie Armour of The Wall Street Journal and Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post join KHN’s Julie Rovner.
An Arizona couple played by the rules and bought employer-provided health insurance. But after they had a baby this year, their out-of-pocket hospital costs and doctors’ bills climbed to more than $12,000 — and medical debt now threatens their new family.
After a 34-year-old woman suffered a stroke in Kansas, doctors there arranged for her to be transferred to a Boston hospital, via an Angel MedFlight Learjet. The woman and her father believed the cost of the medical flight would be covered by her private insurance. Then they got the bill.
Ski buff Sarah Witter will get $6,358.26 back from her hospital and insurer after a careful review of her bill following the KHN-NPR story on her case.
Biologic drugs, made from living organisms, are big moneymakers partly because they have little competition from “biosimilars.” It’s a very different story in Europe.