Whenever I see these I tend to think that the people who have the best story will get the most money and not the ones who need it. It's pretty much a market for self-promoters and scammers, not necessarily people who need help. I also believe that in a civilized, developed, wealthy country this should not be necessary.
> I also believe that in a civilized, developed, wealthy country this should not be necessary.
This I generally agree with, though we will probably disagree on the extent and how much it should cover, what limitations it should put on your behavior etc.
> It's pretty much a market for self-promoters and scammers, not necessarily people who need help.
This, I feel, just describes reality. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, those that ask for help the most, cry the loudest, demand support the most aggressive etc get most of it, not necessarily (and imho rarely) those that need it the most.
I have an acquaintance who is working in a top Bay Area tech company with a total compensation of close to $200k.
Her parents visited her and sadly her Dad had a cardiac episode and had to be taken to ER.
They stabilized him and thankfully he managed to go back to his home country and get proper treatment.
The ER bill was about $50k and she decided that the best way to pay it was by creating a GoFundMe campaign before she even tried to negotiate with the hospital or fight it with the insurance.
She managed to raise $15k.
After seeing that I am reluctant to donate any money to GoFundMe campaigns.
If only it was just genetics. I broke my right leg (femur) when I was 4 years old. After it healed, I never had a single problem with it. Played basketball, baseball, and I still lift weights today. I'm not in great shape, but probably better than average. My right knee started giving me problems. Meniscus tear. Didn't need a surgical solution just PT. Insurance denied paying for my PT because of "strain on the ligaments caused by prior break to femur". 39 years later? Maybe. But to deny PT sessions over that? That's stretching it.
Moreover, when on J1 visa you can get qualifying insurance for 30$/yr. It seems that such insurances may not cover long disability - you may need to go to your home country for a serious treatment.
Of course. It's no different than any other debt. In theory the provider can obtain a judgment against the patient and then ask the home country's court system to enforce it. But in practice this is so expensive, uncertain, and time consuming that most creditors will just write it off as bad debt.
I recently read about people with US student loan debt escaping from it by going abroad where their credit history wouldn't follow them and the loan companies would't be able to get wage garnishments. It's at least possible that this woman's father had no real incentive to pay the bill, making the GoFundMe triply redundant.
So, I cannot speak how easy/hard is to collect debt abroad but I do know that it is possible for prospective employers to query the credit history.
I have recently applied for a job in the finance industry in Denmark, the institution did poke into my American financial life. That also happened when I worked for banks the UK and Wall Street.
Maybe I'm just being dumb, but I don't really understand why that makes you reluctant to donate.
It's not like your friend is trying to scam you or anything. That money is actually going to a bill that they are required to pay. Most people I talk to don't even know they can negotiate hospital bills.
Seems weird to act like your friend or GoFundMe is the villain here, when the issue is really a healthcare system that has a "secret menu".
I am not so sure. When she has the money to pay for it, but instead chooses to portrait like she doesn't and asks others to pay for it, I think it's at least immoral.
It goes without saying that the healthcare system is completely broken, but that doesn't justify above behavior.
200K in the bay area is not exactly wealthy. It's a solid middle to upper-middle class wage. Taking a 50K hit for something you did nothing to deserve, just because you love your parent is stupid. I would hate it if my daughter tried to do that for me.
Sorry but this sounds a little bit backward to me. Helping a friend in need or being altruistic is never a punishment. It's like refusing to donate money to some cause because what did I do to deserve that? Really an odd statement.
She wouldn’t take the bill as far it is concerned legally (as far as I know and dealt with medical bills myself).
She might get mails and phone calls but the collection agency will not go after her assets, well unless her dad has assets in the USA.
The story lacks some details but if she contact the hospital and negotiate based on that, they would likely reduce the bill. Is this moral or not that’s another question, but I agree that she had few options before asking people for money early on. Specially when making 200k.
You do realise that if you buy insurance and don't claim anything that's literally you paying for other people's healthcare, right? That's how insurance works. The only difference between that and the socialised national health systems around the world is that you also pay for the insurance company's profit.
I feel like I have to say this to everyone all the time when they try to defend the US as having the greatest healthcare system ever. It's literally impossible to offer the same service as a socialized, government program for cheaper when the non-socialized option has to make a profit. If a non-socialized system can drive costs down, so can a socialized provider. There's literally no situation where the socialized system loses on this.
Thankfully here in the UK that sort of situation is incredibly rare. 99.9% of necessary treatments are available. That's one of the advantages of having socialised healthcare in a very wealthy country.
So can a private company. We're talking about the comparison of private to public. All things being equal, a public trust will always cost less because profit is not necessary as part of the cost of service.
In theory, no. A private company (by the commonly understood definition) always needs growth and profit to continue providing a good service. Neither of those things are compatible with being cheaper than a provider that doesn't have to optimise for those things.
Obviously in practice that's not how things work out, so in most cases private companies end up moving faster, leveraging efficiencies, utilising innovation better, and generally being cheaper. The lesson shouldn't be that means the government shouldn't provide services though, but rather that the government should act more like a business and do things businesses do to be competitive.
It's very noticeable that when government does this it works really well. The UK government has brought a lot of it's web and IT services in-house in the past decade, and they're so much better now.
I never said all services should be socialized. For example, I don't think auto repair services should be socialized. Do you see how silly your statement is?
And no... there is no way that a private company could offer something cheaper because both entities function the same way except that a private company also has to make a profit. Governments are not profit-making entities. Take whatever method a private company has to make something cheaper and remove profit and you have something the government can handle.
I didn't realize we were talking fantasy hypotheticals. Reality is, private companies can and will always do better than the government in almost everything. For the exact reason that you claim to be the problem. They want profit.
Industries like healthcare are plagued with government interference. Some regulations are important. Many just serve as a moat around the oligopoly that is the current private health Care system.
No one's talking fantasy hypotheticals except for you. The "reality" that you're claiming is not at all actually reality considering that every other industrialized nation on the planet pays less for healthcare and prescription drugs than we do in the United States. If private industry can drive prices down, then so can government. The USPS was the poster child for efficient and effective government service until Republicans decided to absolutely decimate it because of lobbying from private industry. Government services don't need to make a profit, they don't need to lobby, and they don't have any of the greed-driven motivation that private companies do.
You're either being intentionally obtuse or you're intentionally being misleading for some reason. This isn't rocket science. If two things are equal and one has the requirement to also generate profit, there's no way the other can possibly cost more.
200k may not be wealthy, but I bet it's enough for an annual vacation abroad. That is a luxury many cannot afford. I think it's really inappropriate to create a gofundme campaign in this situation.
Because they are not in a position of need. There are other people which were more reliant on such help to avoid a disastrous situation. If this family got no crowd sourced help, I think they would have been OK. Of course, there are a lot of assumptions in this assessment.
My comment has nothing to do with my opinion on the cost of medical services in the US. If you would like that, I think the Affordable Care Act used up a very rare opportunity for improvement to put us into a worse situation. What we really needed was a public option for the private companies to compete with.
Here in California our subsidized option, Covered California, was horrendous, at least at launch. Also, subsidized was not enough to help, and the subsidization counted as taxable income which was a slap in the face for those who needed it.
It's a high enough salary where the 50k bill is easily affordable on a repayment plan, which most hospitals offer interest free. She didn't need to beg others for money.
Firstly, I don't see how she has any legal obligation to pay for the medical care, at all. Your friend didn't get the medical care, her father did. Unless the father is a legal dependent of your friend, she isn't responsible for his medical expenses, at all.
Secondly, it sounds like you are making assumptions about her overall financial status, based on what you know about her current salary.
She might have substantial student debt, medical debt, spousal debt, be upside-down on a mortgage, have other family that she is supporting financially, etc.
Just knowing someone's salary doesn't provide a very clear picture of their overall financial status.
she started a page to help her father, she isnt responsible for paying all of his bills, she just wanted to help out. At least thats what it seems to me.
> The ER bill was about $50k and she decided that the best way to pay it was by creating a GoFundMe campaign before she even tried to negotiate with the hospital or fight it with the insurance.
For me it sounds like she could have done more on her own to solve this problem before “socializing” the solution.
PS: Yes, healthcare is broken but at the end, she as a resident knows that and when someone comes to visit it is her responsibility to advise or buy a travelers insurance. It is not that expensive.
No, travel insurance is not. They don't even ask health questions. The cost is based on the cost of your trip, and can be as little as $50-$100 for a decent plan on a $5k trip, and about $500 for a year.
This article is about people who've had cancer at some point in their lives, even if they're currently cancer free and not having any treatment. That's what the FCA report focused on, but this problem affects 15 million people in the UK.
They might not ask health questions, but if you're not careful and don't disclose anything material, they're probably going to find a way to get out of paying when it comes to it.
Travel insurance for older people with prior conditions can be expensive. My parents visited the US for a few weeks and their insurance cost something like $800 with a $500 deductible. Wasn't even that good either, with a stack of pages with terms and conditions. Fortunately they didn't have to use it.
In Germany, I pay about 12 USD per year for a travel insurance that covers an unlimited number of trips up to two months each, including repatriation if medically advised.
Honestly most people who haven't dealt with the healthcare system before wouldn't even consider that negotiating your freaking hospital bill is an option. No sane person would (especially if they grew up in another country).
A donation isnt an obligation. If you're willing give then by all means do so, if not then it's not a big deal and if your friend gives you trouble for it then tell her off.
I see your discomfort with her making a GoFundMe the same as you view her not trying to negotiate the price down. When you're comfortable setting boundaries a lot of the discomfort in life goes away and things like trying to negotiate with someone or being uncomfortable with friends looking for (perhaps unnecessary) help on a bill become things you can handle
"The ER bill was about $50k and she decided that the best way to pay it was by creating a GoFundMe campaign before she even tried to negotiate with the hospital or fight it with the insurance.
"
at a minimum she should have tried to deal with the insurance and the hospital first. She makes 200k. There are other people who are much more deserving of help.
Donations aren't a zero sum game. If she's soliciting her social network, odds are most of these donations aren't being diverted from other GoFundMes. Most of the money donated would probably be spent in other ways if the campaign didn't exist.
Personally I have seen a pattern where people who are making more money are less reluctant to ask for money versus people who really don’t have money. They often seem to suffer in silence. I have now seen several occasions where people who are making very good money are hitting others up for money for health care or weddings. It leaves a bad taste with me. From a certain income you should take care of yourself.
Just clarifying for the inevitable comments you'll get that you're referring to visible homelessness, living on the street, etc., right? Not people who just lost a job and can't make rent?
I'd say it's still a financial one, though highly complex. Not financial in the sense of "they're broke and homeless", but financial in the sense of America has terrible healthcare and within that terrible healthcare, mental healthcare is the bottom of the pile. And that's just financially - culturally we don't help each other seek mental health help either.
I imagine it's terribly complex, so I don't mean to simplify. I just have had the nagging feeling lately that we shouldn't have any homeless. It doesn't seem like a useful state of being. If you're mentally healthy but don't want to live a traditional life (job/etc), I'm not sure we should allow you to live under a bridge - go live in the woods, there's plenty left. I just can't see another way to look at the homeless problem.
It just seems that predominately people on the streets are suffering physically and mentally, and we're doing nothing.
I think it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Many people driven to homelessness fall victim to drugs & develop mental illness as a result of being on the streets. When you're constantly on edge 24/7, focusing on survival and never get proper sleep your mental (and physical) health will deteriorate.
This is peak #LateStakeCapitalism, no fault to GoFundMe but these campaigns are such like something out of a YA dystopian novel. Slowly but surely I do believe American's are becoming more comfortable with the idea of free healthcare, in whatever form that comes in.
> Slowly but surely I do believe American's are becoming more comfortable with the idea of free healthcare, in whatever form that comes in.
I perceive that Americans are primarily undecided on how it gets paid for. And if that comes from taxpayers directly, or government coffers directly, then the Americans turn on themselves and prefer a Machiavellian paradise, or the exact opposite where taxpayers and government drop helicopter money on the insurers who laugh all the way to the bank.
A smaller but growing group looks at the insurance companies and other structural issues, hoping to alleviate cost pressure, perhaps to make it more practical to subsidize healthcare after the costs are managed.
There isn't really such thing as free healthcare as long as staff need education and training, doctors have to be paid, hospitals need to be administrated, and treatments have material costs, etc. If it's being paid for by the taxpayer, it's not coming at no cost to them, they're paying for it in a pretty direct way.
I wonder if it would cost as much as the F35 program. I'd rather pay for a junkie's health care than a token national alliance tech project jet that no one needs.
Yes, but we're already paying that and we're spending more than everyone else. [1] Universal healthcare isn't just morally justified, it's also financially justified. The only justifications for our insane system are regulatory capture or sadism.
You seem to be assuming that introducing universal healthcare in the US would bring down costs. I've never seen any evidence whatsoever to support that claim.
Changing the country changes too many variables at once. The US also spends a whole lot more on infrastructure than virtually everyone else in the world, and there's no obvious reason why. Just assuming that universal healthcare would solve all of our cost problems is comically optimistic.
Everybody knows this. There’s no need to repeat this every time someone says “free health care” any more than there’s a need to repeat “the sky is blue.”
>The Sri Sathya Sai Institutes of Higher Medical Sciences also popularly known as Super Specialty Hospitals are tertiary health care hospitals established by Sri Sathya Sai Baba to provide patient care facilities to all irrespective of caste, class, creed, gender, religion or nationality totally free of charge.
I am upset that any individual needs a GoFundMe page to get money for a treatment. However, I also know many people who simply make terrible life decisions such as lack of insurance, buy luxury cars/homes and generally live beyond their means. Then, when shit hits the fan they own nothing and have to rely on assistance. I would much rather have the government take the money from everyone then use it to fund healthcare. Most average people are not smart about money.
Also, I recently donated to a family member, even though the treatment she is receiving is in my opinion snake oil. There is 0 peer reviewed studies. I still have mixed feelings about it. I researched what other people experienced with the treatment and results were mostly negative. They sell hope.
I too have a chronic condition, and there are doctors who offer magic solutions for large sums of money. There is a doctor who claims he had the condition and treated himself. Then weeks later his website went up and he now offers the treatment for a tiny sum of like $13k. Desperate people will pay that money for having hope. It is sad imo.
In general regular doctors will be blunt and honest. Doctor needs to tell you that if there is no hope there is no hope and how much time you have or what you can expect. In the practices that operate in grey areas and provide treatments which are not backed up by science people are getting scammed. I have been to one of those places with a family member...everywhere you look they have quotes about hope and not giving up but then when it comes time to leave you are responsible for $3000 for a visit, of course no insurance will cover it. Makes me disgusted, as that money would be better spent trying to adapt to your new condition if possible.
I too had a hard time coping with my condition and honestly the US social safety net is pure garbage. Disability takes two fucking years to get a decision, and you will most likely need a lawyer. You could not even get healthcare before obamacare or pre-existing condition would not be covered. I lost a job and had to pay $600 for cobra insurance. Honestly, just thinking what I had to go through makes me want to go back to Europe.
One of the bars I go to, every other month or so seems to have a fundraiser for a regular at the bar.
I almost never donate unless I'm there the day of the fundraiser, or there's food involved. $10 spagetti dinner for instance.
I understand this person needs help. But in almost every case, I know this person. I know how much $$$ they spend on acohol a week. I know how they got fired from their job for not showing up. I know they blew their tax return in a week. I'm not a cold hearted person but I don't understand why others have to bail them out.
Should the fire department skip someone's house because they made the poor decision to have a christmas tree or because they didn't maintain/clean their fireplace or chimney?
I think it's fair to compare socialized healthcare to fire departments or public education. The case of donating money to a fund raiser is silly though. It's hard to know how much you might be "obligated" to donate even if you argue that the amount is more than 0.
Trash collection is a public safety issue. We can't have trash building up, attracting pests and spreading disease. If they don't pay the trash bill then the trash man should still stop at their house. But then the local government should place a lien on the property, and if necessary sell it at auction to settle the bill.
>I know how they got fired from their job for not showing up.
Are depressed people not worthy of keeping alive? Do they not bring enough value to the table, so it's okay to just let them die?
>I know they blew their tax return in a week.
Is poor financial sense justification for not helping someone out that needs help?
I dunno, these all seem like kinda tenuous justifications for not giving. By all means, it's your money. I'm not telling you how to spend it. Just that I don't agree with the core idea that poor people should live like hermits, that you know everything about people's lives, that not being taught finance by anyone is a solid justification for not giving.
It seems rather post-hoc. Personally I don't think any of thse things should justify someone losing basic human rights like food, shelter, or health. This isn't to say the problem should be solved by private charity, it shouldn't. Can't, I would even say.
Not out of proportion with their income and expenses, no. You might as well ask "are middle class people not allowed to buy a Ferrari?" Of course they're allowed to, but they're going to have trouble raising money when they can't pay their mortgage.
>Are depressed people not worthy of keeping alive? Do they not bring enough value to the table, so it's okay to just let them die?
That's a pretty sweeping assumption, but to some extent what else are you going to do? If someone refuses to participate in society, it's not on me to bail them out. Otherwise I'd spend all my time on the streets of SF trying to fix people.
>Is poor financial sense justification for not helping someone out that needs help?
Yes, absolutely 100%, yes.
No one else is entitled to your money. It doesn't even matter how tenuous the reasons are. There don't need to be any reasons to not give someone money.
We should help this person out. But giving him money clearly is not the best way, in fact it may seem like giving him money is only enabling his bad lifestyle choices.
Personal responsibility is a pretty simple concept: if you cannot afford necessities like food, shelter, and medical care (which are not "human rights" in the sense that you do not have the right to compel other people to perform the labor required to supply you with these things) then you should not be buying alcohol, especially not at marked-up prices for having someone serve it to you, and neither should you be blowing your tax returns on other discretionary items. Everything else is just excuses. Nobody should be prioritizing "having fun" over food and shelter, and those that do are not entitled to have their impulsive behavior subsidized by others.
>(which are not "human rights" in the sense that you do not have the right to compel other people to perform the labor required to supply you with these things)
>(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care
The UN can say whatever they feel like but the notion of positive rights for able adults is arbitrary and unfounded. You aren't entitled to the care of society unless you uphold your part of the social contract and contribute in return.
Or in other words if you have a right to others' labor, then by not working you are violating their human right to yours, and therefore their obligations cease.
Which is the way things are, unless the able care about them or the disabled able to convince the able to help them then yes they will be left to die or be executed.
I already covered this. Children and the infirm lack the capacity to produce so they owe nothing.
Also do note that nowhere have I argued that the genuinely destitute should starve, even capable adults. But if you have the spare cash to throw away on being a regular at a bar, as in the scenerio at hand, then I have no sympathy.
>I already covered this. Children and the infirm lack the capacity to produce so they owe nothing.
How do you define "able enough to work"? What if someone has severe mental deficiencies but can still lift and move things? Can you determine with near certainty who is able enough to work and who is malingering?
These are not new problems, but your proposal is worse than the status quo.
I mean, you can do both. I would argue it is the responsibility of a good and just society to take care of all its members. You should still try to feed, house and treat that person even after poor decisions, but you should also have systems and policies in place to help prevent those poor decisions in the first place.
System such as:
- Keeping more of their own money via taxes for Employment Insurance when they lose a job.
- Arming them with better decision making skills via education
- Having a system for healthcare that works fro everyone, funded via taxes, such that having a job or money is not relevant to receiving lifesaving medical care.
>>I know how they got fired from their job for not showing up.
>Are depressed people not worthy of keeping alive? Do they not bring enough value to the table, so it's okay to just let them die?
This is an assumption that they didn't show up to work because of a depression bout. It could have been a myriad of reasons, with the possibility that none of them had anything to do with depression.
> I know this person. I know how much $$$ they spend on acohol a week. I know how they got fired from their job for not showing up. I know they blew their tax return in a week. I'm not a cold hearted person but ...
Well, you kind of are. That's basically of the definition of cold-hearted.
It's 100% your legal and moral right to not contribute to these fundraisers. You could even argue that the best course of action here is to be cold-hearted, but you should at least own it.
>I too have a chronic condition, and there are doctors who offer magic solutions for large sums of money. There is a doctor who claims he had the condition and treated himself. Then weeks later his website went up and he now offers the treatment for a tiny sum of like $13k. Desperate people will pay that money for having hope. It is sad imo.
If it's an FDA-approved treatment, then it's been vetted by peer-reviewed double-blind trials so it's unlikely to be snake oil.
If it's not an FDA-approved treatment, then I highly advise you to report them to the authorities because you stand to receive whistleblower rewards that are many, many times larger than the tiny sum of $13k.
I wrote about this on here once before, but for a while I was working on a short story about a fictional dystopia in which crowdfunded healthcare devolves into a televised game show where people pitch their sob story to viewers. Whomever ends up with the most votes (a la The Voice), moves onto the next round, until finally one person is crowned the winner and has all of their needs taken care of. What was supposed to be a silly story turned super cynical and depressing, so I stopped working on it.
Each contestant was asked to talk about the recent financial and emotional hard times she had been through. The interview would climax with Bailey asking the contestant what she needed most and why she wanted to win the title of Queen for a Day. Often the request was for medical care or therapeutic equipment to help a chronically ill child, or might be for a hearing aid, a new washing machine, or a refrigerator. Many women broke down sobbing as they described their plights.
I'd agree if we were talking BlackMirror S1-S4... If it was S5, healthcare would just be paid for after the tiniest bit of struggle and everyone would live happily ever after, the end.
I think "Nosedive" goes into similar territory and might even be the better fit, since success in this kind of show and GoFundMe campaigns could be considered a proxy for popularity and/or "good" presentation.
I remember a house in Orange County got done up in the first season of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition but they definitely pivoted towards families with greater needs.
Having worked for a competitor that was later acquired by GoFundMe, the reality we faced was that we could determine pretty quickly whether a fundraiser was going to be successful within 48hrs or so. While we spent a lot of time developing tools to help people setup a good fundraiser which would increase their chances, for the most part, it just came down to their extended social network.
Most people came to our service directly to give to a specific fundraiser (as opposed to coming to our site to find a fundraiser to give) and while we did things like "now that you gave here, check out this" type features, the results were somewhat lackluster. If I were to start a compassionate crowdfunding site today, I'd try to build it in such a way that it could be embedded into niche communities that are both to gather content, support, and fundraising.
The whole experience is that it was fantastic to work with people really dedicated to the mission and feeling like you are making a difference. On the other hand, it's hard also not to change your mind on how healthcare is viewed in the US, that the majority of Americans are one car transmission away from a downward spiral into poverty, and while I appreciate GoFundMe and other compassionate crowdfunding sites, a high tech only, private enterprise solution is not always the best way to solve humanities problems. Coming from a die hard capitalist, that's saying something.
No, but we shouldn't assume that solutions that work in small countries are going to work for large countries. In particular, I don't expect that the 5th percentile standard of living is going to be as high in large countries as it is in wealthy small countries. We should be looking to solve problems in our own ways instead of naively trying to imitate the way that small wealthy countries work.
He's right, I have to admit: every country with a population more than ~175M is pretty f-ed up somehow if you think about it.
It really makes me wonder if there's an actual scaling problem here. Just look at how much trouble large corporations have with inefficiency. Maybe humans just aren't capable yet of making extremely large organizations work well.
I wonder what would happen if you could preemptively donate onto a pool that would guarantee you first place in line should you ever need to pay for an emergency medical expense? Yes this is almost the same as insurance, just without the middle man:
$100 upfront buys you 2 years of protection up to $50k for emergency issues. I would go for it. The major issue I see are the grey area in what constitutes an emergency, as well as the "hidden menu" as someone here calls it. That if you don't try to negotiate, you are throwing away massive amounts by paying sticker price.
Perhaps another approach is to buy "attorney insurance" that buys you an expert negotiator (and legal representation) should you ever need to fight the hospital over one of these ordeals.
The biggest issue is death spirals. Healthier people will drop out of the market increasing costs, causing the almost healthy people to drop out, increasing costs, until no one is left.
The problem is that if you don't have an insurance company for the hospital to attempt to gouge, all you're going to get is the bare minimum required to stabilize you and push you out of the ER. And if you do have insurance, you just need to keep enough bankruptcy-seizable assets to fill your out-of-pocket maximum and then play hardball over any excess that they attempt to charge you. Pay your OOP max, then cordially invite everyone who bills you to either work it out with the insurance company/regulator/mediatory or go pound sand because you're judgement proof.
I don’t see how that would get rid of the middleman. You’d still need some entity to hold on to the money, evaluate claims, and pay them. This is just a specialized kind of insurance.
I’m a visible transgender woman and meaning I don’t pass as a woman aesthetically. I’ve spent several years fighting the healthcare system & insurance provider but no prevail. I can see a transgender woman in Toronto managed to get funding in a few days using GoFundMe. She looks gorgeous in her picture and I’m surprised she doesn’t pass. I’m not sure how I feel about it, somewhat happy for her and frustrated personally. Seems like everything is painfully pointless when it comes to decency in society. Everything is a battle to keep the poor close to suicide it feels like.
IDK, a lot of people on HN seem to understand from comments I've read, that the healthcare & insurance system are needed to be overhauled.
The GoFundMe did help a woman in great pain of life being too challenging to finance her surgeries and when every other system designed to help is denying the treatments that should be medically necessary.
I could even say the healthcare & insurance system are currently designed for having a person live a hellish life. They don't care even if a person has a letter from a doctor saying the surgeries are medically necessary from my experience.
It would be nice if people that downvote actually express why. HN used to be that way several years ago. I enjoyed learning who I'm dealing with when it comes to people against my insight in life; as I think anybody does.
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[ 25.6 ms ] story [ 4540 ms ] threadThis I generally agree with, though we will probably disagree on the extent and how much it should cover, what limitations it should put on your behavior etc.
> It's pretty much a market for self-promoters and scammers, not necessarily people who need help.
This, I feel, just describes reality. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, those that ask for help the most, cry the loudest, demand support the most aggressive etc get most of it, not necessarily (and imho rarely) those that need it the most.
Her parents visited her and sadly her Dad had a cardiac episode and had to be taken to ER.
They stabilized him and thankfully he managed to go back to his home country and get proper treatment.
The ER bill was about $50k and she decided that the best way to pay it was by creating a GoFundMe campaign before she even tried to negotiate with the hospital or fight it with the insurance.
She managed to raise $15k.
After seeing that I am reluctant to donate any money to GoFundMe campaigns.
Fine if you win the genetic lottery. Not so much if you’re born with pre-existing conditions.
1 month:
https://ibb.co/fnq4d1v
Details:
https://ibb.co/PTrSFHx
https://ibb.co/cvyPvjW
I have recently applied for a job in the finance industry in Denmark, the institution did poke into my American financial life. That also happened when I worked for banks the UK and Wall Street.
It's not like your friend is trying to scam you or anything. That money is actually going to a bill that they are required to pay. Most people I talk to don't even know they can negotiate hospital bills.
Seems weird to act like your friend or GoFundMe is the villain here, when the issue is really a healthcare system that has a "secret menu".
This is not to detract from your comment about the system being broken
It goes without saying that the healthcare system is completely broken, but that doesn't justify above behavior.
She might get mails and phone calls but the collection agency will not go after her assets, well unless her dad has assets in the USA.
The story lacks some details but if she contact the hospital and negotiate based on that, they would likely reduce the bill. Is this moral or not that’s another question, but I agree that she had few options before asking people for money early on. Specially when making 200k.
But you are OK if other well-meaning people pay? If you make 200k you can take the hit and you should have known better.
Actually, there is- it's when the socialized system decides they're good enough, and stops trying.
There is literally no way a private company could offer something cheaper and better than the government?
Obviously in practice that's not how things work out, so in most cases private companies end up moving faster, leveraging efficiencies, utilising innovation better, and generally being cheaper. The lesson shouldn't be that means the government shouldn't provide services though, but rather that the government should act more like a business and do things businesses do to be competitive.
It's very noticeable that when government does this it works really well. The UK government has brought a lot of it's web and IT services in-house in the past decade, and they're so much better now.
And no... there is no way that a private company could offer something cheaper because both entities function the same way except that a private company also has to make a profit. Governments are not profit-making entities. Take whatever method a private company has to make something cheaper and remove profit and you have something the government can handle.
Industries like healthcare are plagued with government interference. Some regulations are important. Many just serve as a moat around the oligopoly that is the current private health Care system.
You're either being intentionally obtuse or you're intentionally being misleading for some reason. This isn't rocket science. If two things are equal and one has the requirement to also generate profit, there's no way the other can possibly cost more.
My comment has nothing to do with my opinion on the cost of medical services in the US. If you would like that, I think the Affordable Care Act used up a very rare opportunity for improvement to put us into a worse situation. What we really needed was a public option for the private companies to compete with.
Here in California our subsidized option, Covered California, was horrendous, at least at launch. Also, subsidized was not enough to help, and the subsidization counted as taxable income which was a slap in the face for those who needed it.
Secondly, it sounds like you are making assumptions about her overall financial status, based on what you know about her current salary.
She might have substantial student debt, medical debt, spousal debt, be upside-down on a mortgage, have other family that she is supporting financially, etc.
Just knowing someone's salary doesn't provide a very clear picture of their overall financial status.
> The ER bill was about $50k and she decided that the best way to pay it was by creating a GoFundMe campaign before she even tried to negotiate with the hospital or fight it with the insurance.
For me it sounds like she could have done more on her own to solve this problem before “socializing” the solution.
PS: Yes, healthcare is broken but at the end, she as a resident knows that and when someone comes to visit it is her responsibility to advise or buy a travelers insurance. It is not that expensive.
It's prohibitively expensive for a wide range of people not in perfect health.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44601046
Travel insurance for older people with prior conditions can be expensive. My parents visited the US for a few weeks and their insurance cost something like $800 with a $500 deductible. Wasn't even that good either, with a stack of pages with terms and conditions. Fortunately they didn't have to use it.
I see your discomfort with her making a GoFundMe the same as you view her not trying to negotiate the price down. When you're comfortable setting boundaries a lot of the discomfort in life goes away and things like trying to negotiate with someone or being uncomfortable with friends looking for (perhaps unnecessary) help on a bill become things you can handle
"
at a minimum she should have tried to deal with the insurance and the hospital first. She makes 200k. There are other people who are much more deserving of help.
There is overwhelming evidence that homeless is primarily a mental health problem, not a financial one.
https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...
> As of 2015, the state can just about declare victory: The population of chronically homeless people has dropped by 91 percent.
This by approaching housing access/payment before anything like mental health services.
Unfortunately, after over a decade, funding was withdrawn... and the homeless population spiked again.
I imagine it's terribly complex, so I don't mean to simplify. I just have had the nagging feeling lately that we shouldn't have any homeless. It doesn't seem like a useful state of being. If you're mentally healthy but don't want to live a traditional life (job/etc), I'm not sure we should allow you to live under a bridge - go live in the woods, there's plenty left. I just can't see another way to look at the homeless problem.
It just seems that predominately people on the streets are suffering physically and mentally, and we're doing nothing.
I perceive that Americans are primarily undecided on how it gets paid for. And if that comes from taxpayers directly, or government coffers directly, then the Americans turn on themselves and prefer a Machiavellian paradise, or the exact opposite where taxpayers and government drop helicopter money on the insurers who laugh all the way to the bank.
A smaller but growing group looks at the insurance companies and other structural issues, hoping to alleviate cost pressure, perhaps to make it more practical to subsidize healthcare after the costs are managed.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/403248-poll-seventy-pe...
The US currently spends ~3.5 trillion per year on health care.
So yes, taxpayer funded health care would cost as much as the F35 program. In fact, quite a bit more. Perhaps 150x more per year.
1. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
Sri Sathya Sai Super Specialty Hospital
>The Sri Sathya Sai Institutes of Higher Medical Sciences also popularly known as Super Specialty Hospitals are tertiary health care hospitals established by Sri Sathya Sai Baba to provide patient care facilities to all irrespective of caste, class, creed, gender, religion or nationality totally free of charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Sathya_Sai_Super_Specialit...
It's staffed and paid for by devotees of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
If you disagree please explain how healthcare could be free.
Also, I recently donated to a family member, even though the treatment she is receiving is in my opinion snake oil. There is 0 peer reviewed studies. I still have mixed feelings about it. I researched what other people experienced with the treatment and results were mostly negative. They sell hope.
I too have a chronic condition, and there are doctors who offer magic solutions for large sums of money. There is a doctor who claims he had the condition and treated himself. Then weeks later his website went up and he now offers the treatment for a tiny sum of like $13k. Desperate people will pay that money for having hope. It is sad imo.
In general regular doctors will be blunt and honest. Doctor needs to tell you that if there is no hope there is no hope and how much time you have or what you can expect. In the practices that operate in grey areas and provide treatments which are not backed up by science people are getting scammed. I have been to one of those places with a family member...everywhere you look they have quotes about hope and not giving up but then when it comes time to leave you are responsible for $3000 for a visit, of course no insurance will cover it. Makes me disgusted, as that money would be better spent trying to adapt to your new condition if possible.
I too had a hard time coping with my condition and honestly the US social safety net is pure garbage. Disability takes two fucking years to get a decision, and you will most likely need a lawyer. You could not even get healthcare before obamacare or pre-existing condition would not be covered. I lost a job and had to pay $600 for cobra insurance. Honestly, just thinking what I had to go through makes me want to go back to Europe.
Edit: Apologies that this turned into a rant.
I almost never donate unless I'm there the day of the fundraiser, or there's food involved. $10 spagetti dinner for instance.
I understand this person needs help. But in almost every case, I know this person. I know how much $$$ they spend on acohol a week. I know how they got fired from their job for not showing up. I know they blew their tax return in a week. I'm not a cold hearted person but I don't understand why others have to bail them out.
Should the trash man not stop at your house if you haven't paid your trash bill for the quartter?
Are poor people not allowed to have fun?
>I know how they got fired from their job for not showing up.
Are depressed people not worthy of keeping alive? Do they not bring enough value to the table, so it's okay to just let them die?
>I know they blew their tax return in a week.
Is poor financial sense justification for not helping someone out that needs help?
I dunno, these all seem like kinda tenuous justifications for not giving. By all means, it's your money. I'm not telling you how to spend it. Just that I don't agree with the core idea that poor people should live like hermits, that you know everything about people's lives, that not being taught finance by anyone is a solid justification for not giving.
It seems rather post-hoc. Personally I don't think any of thse things should justify someone losing basic human rights like food, shelter, or health. This isn't to say the problem should be solved by private charity, it shouldn't. Can't, I would even say.
Not out of proportion with their income and expenses, no. You might as well ask "are middle class people not allowed to buy a Ferrari?" Of course they're allowed to, but they're going to have trouble raising money when they can't pay their mortgage.
>Are depressed people not worthy of keeping alive? Do they not bring enough value to the table, so it's okay to just let them die?
That's a pretty sweeping assumption, but to some extent what else are you going to do? If someone refuses to participate in society, it's not on me to bail them out. Otherwise I'd spend all my time on the streets of SF trying to fix people.
>Is poor financial sense justification for not helping someone out that needs help?
Yes, absolutely 100%, yes.
No one else is entitled to your money. It doesn't even matter how tenuous the reasons are. There don't need to be any reasons to not give someone money.
We should help this person out. But giving him money clearly is not the best way, in fact it may seem like giving him money is only enabling his bad lifestyle choices.
Money is not the solution here.
Food, shelter, and medical care are absolutely human rights: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
>(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care
/sad sarcasm as some feel this way
Or in other words if you have a right to others' labor, then by not working you are violating their human right to yours, and therefore their obligations cease.
I already covered this. Children and the infirm lack the capacity to produce so they owe nothing.
Also do note that nowhere have I argued that the genuinely destitute should starve, even capable adults. But if you have the spare cash to throw away on being a regular at a bar, as in the scenerio at hand, then I have no sympathy.
How do you define "able enough to work"? What if someone has severe mental deficiencies but can still lift and move things? Can you determine with near certainty who is able enough to work and who is malingering?
These are not new problems, but your proposal is worse than the status quo.
System such as: - Keeping more of their own money via taxes for Employment Insurance when they lose a job. - Arming them with better decision making skills via education - Having a system for healthcare that works fro everyone, funded via taxes, such that having a job or money is not relevant to receiving lifesaving medical care.
>Are depressed people not worthy of keeping alive? Do they not bring enough value to the table, so it's okay to just let them die?
This is an assumption that they didn't show up to work because of a depression bout. It could have been a myriad of reasons, with the possibility that none of them had anything to do with depression.
Well, you kind of are. That's basically of the definition of cold-hearted.
It's 100% your legal and moral right to not contribute to these fundraisers. You could even argue that the best course of action here is to be cold-hearted, but you should at least own it.
If it's an FDA-approved treatment, then it's been vetted by peer-reviewed double-blind trials so it's unlikely to be snake oil.
If it's not an FDA-approved treatment, then I highly advise you to report them to the authorities because you stand to receive whistleblower rewards that are many, many times larger than the tiny sum of $13k.
When I last talked about it, someone pointed out that this was already a thing, back in the 1950s, called "Queen for a Day" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_for_a_Day
Each contestant was asked to talk about the recent financial and emotional hard times she had been through. The interview would climax with Bailey asking the contestant what she needed most and why she wanted to win the title of Queen for a Day. Often the request was for medical care or therapeutic equipment to help a chronically ill child, or might be for a hearing aid, a new washing machine, or a refrigerator. Many women broke down sobbing as they described their plights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Makeover:_Home_Edition
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8502456/
Most people came to our service directly to give to a specific fundraiser (as opposed to coming to our site to find a fundraiser to give) and while we did things like "now that you gave here, check out this" type features, the results were somewhat lackluster. If I were to start a compassionate crowdfunding site today, I'd try to build it in such a way that it could be embedded into niche communities that are both to gather content, support, and fundraising.
The whole experience is that it was fantastic to work with people really dedicated to the mission and feeling like you are making a difference. On the other hand, it's hard also not to change your mind on how healthcare is viewed in the US, that the majority of Americans are one car transmission away from a downward spiral into poverty, and while I appreciate GoFundMe and other compassionate crowdfunding sites, a high tech only, private enterprise solution is not always the best way to solve humanities problems. Coming from a die hard capitalist, that's saying something.
It really makes me wonder if there's an actual scaling problem here. Just look at how much trouble large corporations have with inefficiency. Maybe humans just aren't capable yet of making extremely large organizations work well.
https://grapevine.is/news/2018/10/03/thousands-of-foreign-wo...
$100 upfront buys you 2 years of protection up to $50k for emergency issues. I would go for it. The major issue I see are the grey area in what constitutes an emergency, as well as the "hidden menu" as someone here calls it. That if you don't try to negotiate, you are throwing away massive amounts by paying sticker price.
Perhaps another approach is to buy "attorney insurance" that buys you an expert negotiator (and legal representation) should you ever need to fight the hospital over one of these ordeals.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2837042
The GoFundMe did help a woman in great pain of life being too challenging to finance her surgeries and when every other system designed to help is denying the treatments that should be medically necessary.
I could even say the healthcare & insurance system are currently designed for having a person live a hellish life. They don't care even if a person has a letter from a doctor saying the surgeries are medically necessary from my experience.
It would be nice if people that downvote actually express why. HN used to be that way several years ago. I enjoyed learning who I'm dealing with when it comes to people against my insight in life; as I think anybody does.