20 ms·

GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

244 points by aaronbrethorst 8y ago

ferros 8y ago
I think this is a reflection of what people want to donate/contribute to as much as anything. I’d be keen to know what percent of listings are health related vs what percent of total money raised is health related.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  > I think this is a reflection of what people want to donate/contribute to as much as anything. Just spitballing, but I'd think it's more of a reflection of how broken the US health care system is. A more interesting datapoint would be the health vs non-health money raised broken down by country.
  - ferros 8y ago
    > A more interesting datapoint would be the health vs non-health money raised broken down by country. This!!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- freddie_mercury 8y ago
  1 in 3 campaigns are for medical bills, raising $650 million a year.
exabrial 8y ago
This is wonderful, it really warms my heart to see people contribute voluntarily. That being said, it appears a large portion are people that were uninsured and then came upon a major medical emergency. Why do people take their health for granted? Even those that are insured, look at the obesity and smoking rates, two significant factors in unexpected early death.
- sidlls 8y ago
  Why do you assume the uninsured take their health for granted?
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Less than half of Americans make more than $30/year. Walmart is the nations largest private employer. The average American can not afford a surprise $400 expense. The average American has over $4k in credit card debt. Yet, despite all of this, the average credit rating for an American is at an all time high. Basically, don’t think people take their health for granted but the majority of Americans likely can not afford healthcare coverage if it’s not provided by their employer.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  > Why do people take their health for granted? This is a very myopic view, one that I guess makes you lucky to have. Health insurance is expensive. On the individual market, premiums have more than doubled between 2011 and 2018[1]. Employer-provided health insurance costs have followed a similar trend, with employee contributions increasing at a rate that outpaces employee compensation by a long shot[2]. Not only are health costs increasing at rates that far exceed compensation rates, cost of living expenses are increasing far faster than compensation rates. Average hourly compensation rates have been nearly stagnant since the 1970s[3]. [1] https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/9196-03-figure-3.png https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/9... [2] https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/09/kff11.png https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/0... [3] https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130305161550-chart-productivity-hourly-compensation-1024x576.gif https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130305161550-char...
- ourmandave 8y ago
  A couple years ago my friend and his wife had a head-on collision at highway speed when some drunk asshole crossed the center line. The helicopter ride to the hospital was $80,000 per person. They have awesome insurance (plus supplemental) that doesn't cover a dime of that. Countless surgeries later and that $160K is a tiny fraction of the total.
- 8y ago
sharkweek 8y ago
I like to write short stories in my free time. One that I’ve been working on over the last year is one where the concept of “crowdfunded healthcare” evolves into a dystopian game show where people go on TV and share their sob story on why they need money. Then the viewers at home get to choose who gets the show’s prize money each season through a bracket style voting system that crowns a champion at the end. I had to stop working on it as it got really, really dark the more I wrote. On that note, I find it supremely fucked up that people have to turn to crowdfunding to get their unexpected healthcare costs covered by benevolent internet citizens.
- pault 8y ago
  Jesus, this blew my mind. Not because the concept is outlandish, but because it wouldn't surprise me at all if it actually existed, and I think it would be immensely popular.
  - sharkweek 8y ago
    Yes! It was supposed to be over the top satire with a comical tone, but then it just ended up depressing me because it started to feel far too realistic...
    - bigiain 8y ago
      FWIW, it's not just you. And it's not new. "We are living in interesting times; in fact, they're so interesting that it is not currently possible to write near-future SF." -- Charlie Stross, Sep 2008 http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/09/avalanche.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/09/avalanch...
      - zwkrt 8y ago
        Well Black mirror process this is untrue. I don't think I could be a writer for that show though, just watching it makes me sick.
    - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
RickJWagner 8y ago
It's obvious the CEO cares greatly about this issue. But not quite enough to reduce the percentage that GoFundMe rakes in with every donation.
- dclusin 8y ago
  Exorbitant cost of health care in America is the problem, not GFM's fees. Lowering the fees would be treating the symptom, not the problem.
- tanin 8y ago
  Gofundme doesn't take any fee on certain countries (including US) https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/203604424-Fees-on-GoFundMe https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/203604424-Fee...
ourmandave 8y ago
Every gas station and convenience store I go into has a glass jar with somebody's family picture and a handwritten note pleading for money to help them afford a life saving operation. Most times it's that f*cker, cancer.
- pault 8y ago
  I spent a few years in Belize and sadly this is the de facto public health insurance program there. Everyone who gets cancer or has a major accident has local fundraisers to get help from the community.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    This is essentially what single-payer is, except people are free to determine who the actually want to cover. A bunch of normal folks setting aside money. Unless people just expect 'the rich' to pay for everything.
    - pault 8y ago
      Really? Single payer healthcare is the same as holding a bake sale so your daughter can be treated for leukemia?
    - enraged_camel 8y ago
      You have an astonishing lack of understanding of what single-payer is.
narrator 8y ago
Most people involved in health care, like insurance companies, health care providers, drug companies, doctors and gofundme want more money to be spent on healthcare. That's because it goes eventually into their pockets. The U.S spends double, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare (16%) as any other country which is good evidence that the solution to healthcare problems being to spend more money is very popular. The solution has hit negative marginal returns though and the only way out is a more fundamental change to health care, possibly in the form of price controls on drugs or the 150% of Medicare reimbursment maximum price on all procedures. This sort of predictability of costs will obsolete a whole layer of insurance price game players at the hospital and insurance companies that add to health care costs.
taxicabjesus 8y ago
In America health care is supposed to be as expensive as possible. People demand the system spare no expense on their care. I have some notes to write about "the predicaments of old people". Both my grandfathers lived an extra few years thanks to the pacemakers Medicare paid for. But they just suffered for those final years. A lot of old people's problems are related to excess alcohol consumption. IMHO, there would be much more funds available to spend on the gaps experienced by younger people, if doctors assumed their elderly patients are drinking heavily and treated them for that instead of blowing the programs' budgets on treating the down-stream effects of heavy alcohol consumption [edit2]. I have some friends who lived in Canada for a while. They said the Canadian system doesn't go all-out to keep people alive who are going to die anyways... A few years ago I stopped by to see one of the passengers whom I'd given a free ride to a few years before. She told me she was pregnant. "But I thought you were becoming a man?" She wasn't a he yet, and she'd gotten with a cis-male... They'd called it off before too long, but that's how she'd gotten knocked up. She also said it had a heart defect (she was maybe 4 months along?). This was caused by the hormones she'd been taking to transition. I was pretty sure the baby wouldn't survive long, but didn't say anything... I followed them on teh Facebook. ... Scheduled c-section, a half dozen heart surgeries, after maybe four or six months the infant died anyways. I think other countries' health systems are more careful about how they allocate their health resources [0]. [0] How Cubans Live as Long as Americans at a Tenth of the Cost - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/cuba-health/508859/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/cuba-heal... [edit1: minor edits] [edit2: changed this from quip about keeping people alive for an extra month or two]
- thomasfortes 8y ago
  > I think other countries' health systems are more careful about how they allocate their health resources [0]. Yeah, when you can go for free to a doctor your entire life and your prescriptions are free or subsidized because the government can negotiate prices in bulk, the end result is that you get better results spending less. It's not perfect, but it leads to a better outcome than when people only see a doctor when it's an emergency because they are too afraid to go bankrupt or because they are poor enough that they can't even pay for a simple visit to do an yearly check up.
- 8y ago
kevmo 8y ago
How much longer until GoFundMe becomes America's leading healthcare provider?
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  If Watsi open sourced their platform (Rails on Heroku if memory serves me), I’d bolt it together with medical tourism (travel arrangement through bulk purchasing and scheduling with foreign providers) to get these Americans treated in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and India for a fraction of the price. It’d be a shim to save lives and reduce suffering until the US implements universal healthcare. Healthcare is my hill to die on due to life experience.
Brendinooo 8y ago
>Or the Tennessee couple who want to get pregnant, but whose insurance doesn’t cover the $20,000 worth of “medications, surgeries, scans, lab monitoring, and appointments [that] will need to be paid for upfront and out-of-pocket” for in vitro fertilization. Would an ideal healthcare system cover in vitro for anyone, full stop? Took a buzz through the NHS requirements[0] and there are definitely restrictions. And in vitro is certainly not an uncontroversial procedure. I just thought that was a strange example to use. There are always going to be gaps in what a health system will cover, right? There's always gonna be a market for crowdfunding health stuff, and that's not inherently a bad thing. (Which is my only point, not trying to comment on the broader issue.) [0]: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ivf/availability/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ivf/availability/
- solatic 8y ago
  The Israeli system covers IVF with almost no restrictions, mostly around no longer funding IVF when it no longer makes medical sense. https://www.health.gov.il/English/Topics/fertility/Pages/ivf.aspx https://www.health.gov.il/English/Topics/fertility/Pages/ivf...
  - avip 8y ago
    True. And abortions are also covered, you just need to pass the pregnancy termination committee.
- Aloha 8y ago
  From my perspective, it shouldn't. Yes, its cold and heartless to say so, but wanting children isn't a health issue.
  - fastball 8y ago
    Could you not argue that it is a mental health issue?
    - thanatos_dem 8y ago
temp1928384 8y ago
I'm on insurance, and to be very real I have gotten bills in the past from providers that I never ended up paying. The reality is that this is more common than not...providers only collect some small % of the part of the bill the patient (and not insurance company) is responsible for. They usually end up selling this debt for pennies on the dollar to collections agencies. Do I feel guilty? Not really. But the lesson is that the number you see on some bill from a hospital or provider is not non-negotiable, and in general unlike the IRS they don't exactly have any power to garner your wages to collect. If you find yourself in a position where you're getting some ridiculous bill, you should definitely hire a trusted lawyer to negotiate down a bill on your behalf.
- antisthenes 8y ago
  That's become my strategy as well. 1. Ignore all bills except the most persistent ones. Look at which ones are still being sent 3 months later. 2. Triage and sort the bills. Prioritize the ones that are related to the primary care facility where you were treated. Call them and negotiate to pay less. 3. Wait until 6 months and see if any bills are still coming. If they are, look at them again in order of priority, seeing if any of them are still reasonable and you have actually received the service/care. After 12 months, if you haven't been receiving any care, toss any bills.
- noitsnot 8y ago
  I had an outpatient procedure a few years ago and called to question the bill. It seemed like balance billing at the time and I straight-out said it to the office admin. Apparently that's all it takes, the thought of litigation and bad publicity? I haven't received another bill.
jimrhods23 8y ago
We need to get rid of health insurance companies. They are the reason all of our costs are massively inflated. The same thing is happening in education: universities know that a large percentage of students are getting financial aid, so the true costs are buried in a layer of bureaucracy. Fees and administrative fees continue to go up and the universities will always get their money. The students are then on the hook to pay the loan back. If the Universities actually had to worry about students defaulting, they would be forced to reduce costs or they would go under.
- badfrog 8y ago
  Even if all the bureaucracy of insurance went away, major operations would still likely be tens of thousands of dollars. How do you suggest people pay for that?
  - thanatos_dem 8y ago
    We all do! Something something single payer. Edit: not sure why the downvotes, that’s the reality of things. If you want a more fully fleshed out thought, here you go: We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. In the current system we have insurance payments. It’s effectively the same, paying a small fee regularly, to subsidize the costs for expensive procedures for yourself and (surprise) others. What do you think happens if you pay into insurance your whole life and never need an expensive operation? You’re subsidizing others. Otherwise the insurance companies would be out of business. But with single payer, we cut out companies in the middle pulling a heafty profit for effectively the same system as we could get via taxes. Better?
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      > We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. That's just insurance, managed by the state. > But with single payer, we cut out companies in the middle pulling a heafty profit Oh boy. Lets say I concede, for the sake of argument, that government can run a private business with the same efficiency, and that the profits it would make as private are given back to its consumers (healthcare.gov cost almost 2 billion dollars to make, remember that. Or Blue shield is actually a non-profit, and its not gobbling up the space by reinvesting its supposed profits). To add to that, the profits of healthcare insurances companies are not that large: they have a 6% operating margin, lower than other insurance companies. Cumulatively, the big companies must have around 20~30 billion dollars a year in profits. It's a staggering number, but in the healthspace thats nothing: only the subsidy of tax-exemption for insurance benefits is estimated to be 260 billion a year. You could eliminate that benefit and expand medicaid: but that would help the poor, and wreck the rich and the middle class together, which is often politically unfeasible. https://www.axios.com/profits-are-booming-at-health-insurance-companies-1513302495-18f3710a-c0b4-4ce3-8b7f-894a755e6679.html https://www.axios.com/profits-are-booming-at-health-insuranc... https://www.verywellhealth.com/health-insurance-companies-unreasonable-profits-1738941 https://www.verywellhealth.com/health-insurance-companies-un...
adsadadsad 8y ago
GoFundMe is comical, every day there is a new idiot asking for money for not buying (or invalidating) their travel insurance . Little Fred is sitting in hospital now with bills over $xx,xxx due to a motorbike accident whilst backpacking in XYZ, please give generously so Little Fred can keep his iPhoneX and his large family don't have to put their hands in their pocket. e.g. https://www.gofundme.com/injured-by-scooter-accident https://www.gofundme.com/injured-by-scooter-accident
- hippich 8y ago
  This is what bothers me... I once donated to a GoFundMe run by someone I know (not really friends) - their house got heavy water damage in Houston a couple of years ago. Only a couple weeks later to see pictures of them buying a new car from a dealership to their son. I do not know... Perhaps it is because me, who unlikely to ever buy a new car (despite having several Xs of income than that family) or perhaps the fact they were not committed 100% to solve their immediate problem themselves first and instead looked for someone to donate some extras - it pissed me off. Unlikely to ever donate to anyone ever again, unless I know for sure people are in genuine trouble.
  - adsadadsad 8y ago
    Happens all over the world. I walked into a expat bar a while ago and there was a cash collection for Joe (not his real name incase I get accused of doxxing again lol), he just been diagnosis with some form of cancer (high chance curable) and needed to do chemo. I was like WTF? This guy has top of the range health insurance, a full time job and supportive employer, and sat on a healthy stack of savings and investments. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, it wasn't going to charity or for some gift, just pure cash. Joe is fine now, doesn't drink as much, the money went into his bank - Joe isn't a charitable person - he is actually a consistent cunt (but when someone gets the Big C that all changes and no one has anything but the best to say about them)
- sawhit 8y ago
  You can make your point without doxxing this guy
Proven 8y ago
Makes one wonder why complete eradication of the health "system" wouldn't fix its problems. If you like your startup, you can use your startup. Free market always works better.
refurb 8y ago
Obviously not to the same extent, but you see go fund me campaigns for places with single payer systems. https://www.gofundme.com/canadahealthfail https://www.gofundme.com/canadahealthfail
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

I think this is a reflection of what people want to donate/contribute to as much as anything. I’d be keen to know what percent of listings are health related vs what percent of total money raised is health related.

ddebernardy 8y ago
> I think this is a reflection of what people want to donate/contribute to as much as anything. Just spitballing, but I'd think it's more of a reflection of how broken the US health care system is. A more interesting datapoint would be the health vs non-health money raised broken down by country.
- ferros 8y ago
  > A more interesting datapoint would be the health vs non-health money raised broken down by country. This!!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
freddie_mercury 8y ago
1 in 3 campaigns are for medical bills, raising $650 million a year.

exabrial 8y ago

This is wonderful, it really warms my heart to see people contribute voluntarily. That being said, it appears a large portion are people that were uninsured and then came upon a major medical emergency. Why do people take their health for granted? Even those that are insured, look at the obesity and smoking rates, two significant factors in unexpected early death.

sidlls 8y ago
Why do you assume the uninsured take their health for granted?
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Less than half of Americans make more than $30/year. Walmart is the nations largest private employer. The average American can not afford a surprise $400 expense. The average American has over $4k in credit card debt. Yet, despite all of this, the average credit rating for an American is at an all time high. Basically, don’t think people take their health for granted but the majority of Americans likely can not afford healthcare coverage if it’s not provided by their employer.
darpa_escapee 8y ago
> Why do people take their health for granted? This is a very myopic view, one that I guess makes you lucky to have. Health insurance is expensive. On the individual market, premiums have more than doubled between 2011 and 2018[1]. Employer-provided health insurance costs have followed a similar trend, with employee contributions increasing at a rate that outpaces employee compensation by a long shot[2]. Not only are health costs increasing at rates that far exceed compensation rates, cost of living expenses are increasing far faster than compensation rates. Average hourly compensation rates have been nearly stagnant since the 1970s[3]. [1] https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/9196-03-figure-3.png https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/9... [2] https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/09/kff11.png https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/0... [3] https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130305161550-chart-productivity-hourly-compensation-1024x576.gif https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130305161550-char...
ourmandave 8y ago
A couple years ago my friend and his wife had a head-on collision at highway speed when some drunk asshole crossed the center line. The helicopter ride to the hospital was $80,000 per person. They have awesome insurance (plus supplemental) that doesn't cover a dime of that. Countless surgeries later and that $160K is a tiny fraction of the total.
8y ago

sharkweek 8y ago

I like to write short stories in my free time. One that I’ve been working on over the last year is one where the concept of “crowdfunded healthcare” evolves into a dystopian game show where people go on TV and share their sob story on why they need money. Then the viewers at home get to choose who gets the show’s prize money each season through a bracket style voting system that crowns a champion at the end. I had to stop working on it as it got really, really dark the more I wrote. On that note, I find it supremely fucked up that people have to turn to crowdfunding to get their unexpected healthcare costs covered by benevolent internet citizens.

pault 8y ago
Jesus, this blew my mind. Not because the concept is outlandish, but because it wouldn't surprise me at all if it actually existed, and I think it would be immensely popular.
- sharkweek 8y ago
  Yes! It was supposed to be over the top satire with a comical tone, but then it just ended up depressing me because it started to feel far too realistic...
  - bigiain 8y ago
    FWIW, it's not just you. And it's not new. "We are living in interesting times; in fact, they're so interesting that it is not currently possible to write near-future SF." -- Charlie Stross, Sep 2008 http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/09/avalanche.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/09/avalanch...
    - zwkrt 8y ago
      Well Black mirror process this is untrue. I don't think I could be a writer for that show though, just watching it makes me sick.
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago

RickJWagner 8y ago

It's obvious the CEO cares greatly about this issue. But not quite enough to reduce the percentage that GoFundMe rakes in with every donation.

dclusin 8y ago
Exorbitant cost of health care in America is the problem, not GFM's fees. Lowering the fees would be treating the symptom, not the problem.
tanin 8y ago
Gofundme doesn't take any fee on certain countries (including US) https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/203604424-Fees-on-GoFundMe https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/203604424-Fee...

ourmandave 8y ago

Every gas station and convenience store I go into has a glass jar with somebody's family picture and a handwritten note pleading for money to help them afford a life saving operation. Most times it's that f*cker, cancer.

pault 8y ago
I spent a few years in Belize and sadly this is the de facto public health insurance program there. Everyone who gets cancer or has a major accident has local fundraisers to get help from the community.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  This is essentially what single-payer is, except people are free to determine who the actually want to cover. A bunch of normal folks setting aside money. Unless people just expect 'the rich' to pay for everything.
  - pault 8y ago
    Really? Single payer healthcare is the same as holding a bake sale so your daughter can be treated for leukemia?
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    You have an astonishing lack of understanding of what single-payer is.

narrator 8y ago

Most people involved in health care, like insurance companies, health care providers, drug companies, doctors and gofundme want more money to be spent on healthcare. That's because it goes eventually into their pockets. The U.S spends double, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare (16%) as any other country which is good evidence that the solution to healthcare problems being to spend more money is very popular. The solution has hit negative marginal returns though and the only way out is a more fundamental change to health care, possibly in the form of price controls on drugs or the 150% of Medicare reimbursment maximum price on all procedures. This sort of predictability of costs will obsolete a whole layer of insurance price game players at the hospital and insurance companies that add to health care costs.

taxicabjesus 8y ago

In America health care is supposed to be as expensive as possible. People demand the system spare no expense on their care. I have some notes to write about "the predicaments of old people". Both my grandfathers lived an extra few years thanks to the pacemakers Medicare paid for. But they just suffered for those final years. A lot of old people's problems are related to excess alcohol consumption. IMHO, there would be much more funds available to spend on the gaps experienced by younger people, if doctors assumed their elderly patients are drinking heavily and treated them for that instead of blowing the programs' budgets on treating the down-stream effects of heavy alcohol consumption [edit2]. I have some friends who lived in Canada for a while. They said the Canadian system doesn't go all-out to keep people alive who are going to die anyways... A few years ago I stopped by to see one of the passengers whom I'd given a free ride to a few years before. She told me she was pregnant. "But I thought you were becoming a man?" She wasn't a he yet, and she'd gotten with a cis-male... They'd called it off before too long, but that's how she'd gotten knocked up. She also said it had a heart defect (she was maybe 4 months along?). This was caused by the hormones she'd been taking to transition. I was pretty sure the baby wouldn't survive long, but didn't say anything... I followed them on teh Facebook. ... Scheduled c-section, a half dozen heart surgeries, after maybe four or six months the infant died anyways. I think other countries' health systems are more careful about how they allocate their health resources [0]. [0] How Cubans Live as Long as Americans at a Tenth of the Cost - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/cuba-health/508859/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/cuba-heal... [edit1: minor edits] [edit2: changed this from quip about keeping people alive for an extra month or two]

thomasfortes 8y ago
> I think other countries' health systems are more careful about how they allocate their health resources [0]. Yeah, when you can go for free to a doctor your entire life and your prescriptions are free or subsidized because the government can negotiate prices in bulk, the end result is that you get better results spending less. It's not perfect, but it leads to a better outcome than when people only see a doctor when it's an emergency because they are too afraid to go bankrupt or because they are poor enough that they can't even pay for a simple visit to do an yearly check up.
8y ago

kevmo 8y ago

How much longer until GoFundMe becomes America's leading healthcare provider?

toomuchtodo 8y ago
If Watsi open sourced their platform (Rails on Heroku if memory serves me), I’d bolt it together with medical tourism (travel arrangement through bulk purchasing and scheduling with foreign providers) to get these Americans treated in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and India for a fraction of the price. It’d be a shim to save lives and reduce suffering until the US implements universal healthcare. Healthcare is my hill to die on due to life experience.

Brendinooo 8y ago

>Or the Tennessee couple who want to get pregnant, but whose insurance doesn’t cover the $20,000 worth of “medications, surgeries, scans, lab monitoring, and appointments [that] will need to be paid for upfront and out-of-pocket” for in vitro fertilization. Would an ideal healthcare system cover in vitro for anyone, full stop? Took a buzz through the NHS requirements[0] and there are definitely restrictions. And in vitro is certainly not an uncontroversial procedure. I just thought that was a strange example to use. There are always going to be gaps in what a health system will cover, right? There's always gonna be a market for crowdfunding health stuff, and that's not inherently a bad thing. (Which is my only point, not trying to comment on the broader issue.) [0]: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ivf/availability/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ivf/availability/

solatic 8y ago
The Israeli system covers IVF with almost no restrictions, mostly around no longer funding IVF when it no longer makes medical sense. https://www.health.gov.il/English/Topics/fertility/Pages/ivf.aspx https://www.health.gov.il/English/Topics/fertility/Pages/ivf...
- avip 8y ago
  True. And abortions are also covered, you just need to pass the pregnancy termination committee.
Aloha 8y ago
From my perspective, it shouldn't. Yes, its cold and heartless to say so, but wanting children isn't a health issue.
- fastball 8y ago
  Could you not argue that it is a mental health issue?
  - thanatos_dem 8y ago

temp1928384 8y ago

I'm on insurance, and to be very real I have gotten bills in the past from providers that I never ended up paying. The reality is that this is more common than not...providers only collect some small % of the part of the bill the patient (and not insurance company) is responsible for. They usually end up selling this debt for pennies on the dollar to collections agencies. Do I feel guilty? Not really. But the lesson is that the number you see on some bill from a hospital or provider is not non-negotiable, and in general unlike the IRS they don't exactly have any power to garner your wages to collect. If you find yourself in a position where you're getting some ridiculous bill, you should definitely hire a trusted lawyer to negotiate down a bill on your behalf.

antisthenes 8y ago
That's become my strategy as well. 1. Ignore all bills except the most persistent ones. Look at which ones are still being sent 3 months later. 2. Triage and sort the bills. Prioritize the ones that are related to the primary care facility where you were treated. Call them and negotiate to pay less. 3. Wait until 6 months and see if any bills are still coming. If they are, look at them again in order of priority, seeing if any of them are still reasonable and you have actually received the service/care. After 12 months, if you haven't been receiving any care, toss any bills.
noitsnot 8y ago
I had an outpatient procedure a few years ago and called to question the bill. It seemed like balance billing at the time and I straight-out said it to the office admin. Apparently that's all it takes, the thought of litigation and bad publicity? I haven't received another bill.

jimrhods23 8y ago

We need to get rid of health insurance companies. They are the reason all of our costs are massively inflated. The same thing is happening in education: universities know that a large percentage of students are getting financial aid, so the true costs are buried in a layer of bureaucracy. Fees and administrative fees continue to go up and the universities will always get their money. The students are then on the hook to pay the loan back. If the Universities actually had to worry about students defaulting, they would be forced to reduce costs or they would go under.

badfrog 8y ago
Even if all the bureaucracy of insurance went away, major operations would still likely be tens of thousands of dollars. How do you suggest people pay for that?
- thanatos_dem 8y ago
  We all do! Something something single payer. Edit: not sure why the downvotes, that’s the reality of things. If you want a more fully fleshed out thought, here you go: We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. In the current system we have insurance payments. It’s effectively the same, paying a small fee regularly, to subsidize the costs for expensive procedures for yourself and (surprise) others. What do you think happens if you pay into insurance your whole life and never need an expensive operation? You’re subsidizing others. Otherwise the insurance companies would be out of business. But with single payer, we cut out companies in the middle pulling a heafty profit for effectively the same system as we could get via taxes. Better?
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    > We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. That's just insurance, managed by the state. > But with single payer, we cut out companies in the middle pulling a heafty profit Oh boy. Lets say I concede, for the sake of argument, that government can run a private business with the same efficiency, and that the profits it would make as private are given back to its consumers (healthcare.gov cost almost 2 billion dollars to make, remember that. Or Blue shield is actually a non-profit, and its not gobbling up the space by reinvesting its supposed profits). To add to that, the profits of healthcare insurances companies are not that large: they have a 6% operating margin, lower than other insurance companies. Cumulatively, the big companies must have around 20~30 billion dollars a year in profits. It's a staggering number, but in the healthspace thats nothing: only the subsidy of tax-exemption for insurance benefits is estimated to be 260 billion a year. You could eliminate that benefit and expand medicaid: but that would help the poor, and wreck the rich and the middle class together, which is often politically unfeasible. https://www.axios.com/profits-are-booming-at-health-insurance-companies-1513302495-18f3710a-c0b4-4ce3-8b7f-894a755e6679.html https://www.axios.com/profits-are-booming-at-health-insuranc... https://www.verywellhealth.com/health-insurance-companies-unreasonable-profits-1738941 https://www.verywellhealth.com/health-insurance-companies-un...

adsadadsad 8y ago

GoFundMe is comical, every day there is a new idiot asking for money for not buying (or invalidating) their travel insurance . Little Fred is sitting in hospital now with bills over $xx,xxx due to a motorbike accident whilst backpacking in XYZ, please give generously so Little Fred can keep his iPhoneX and his large family don't have to put their hands in their pocket. e.g. https://www.gofundme.com/injured-by-scooter-accident https://www.gofundme.com/injured-by-scooter-accident

hippich 8y ago
This is what bothers me... I once donated to a GoFundMe run by someone I know (not really friends) - their house got heavy water damage in Houston a couple of years ago. Only a couple weeks later to see pictures of them buying a new car from a dealership to their son. I do not know... Perhaps it is because me, who unlikely to ever buy a new car (despite having several Xs of income than that family) or perhaps the fact they were not committed 100% to solve their immediate problem themselves first and instead looked for someone to donate some extras - it pissed me off. Unlikely to ever donate to anyone ever again, unless I know for sure people are in genuine trouble.
- adsadadsad 8y ago
  Happens all over the world. I walked into a expat bar a while ago and there was a cash collection for Joe (not his real name incase I get accused of doxxing again lol), he just been diagnosis with some form of cancer (high chance curable) and needed to do chemo. I was like WTF? This guy has top of the range health insurance, a full time job and supportive employer, and sat on a healthy stack of savings and investments. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, it wasn't going to charity or for some gift, just pure cash. Joe is fine now, doesn't drink as much, the money went into his bank - Joe isn't a charitable person - he is actually a consistent cunt (but when someone gets the Big C that all changes and no one has anything but the best to say about them)
sawhit 8y ago
You can make your point without doxxing this guy

Proven 8y ago

Makes one wonder why complete eradication of the health "system" wouldn't fix its problems. If you like your startup, you can use your startup. Free market always works better.

refurb 8y ago

Obviously not to the same extent, but you see go fund me campaigns for places with single payer systems. https://www.gofundme.com/canadahealthfail https://www.gofundme.com/canadahealthfail

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]