Millions of Americans have to rely on crowdfunding... to pay their medical bills.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I'm trying to raise money to help me pay for my health care expenses.
00:03I put a link to the family's GoFundMe campaign in my bio.
00:06I've got about $6,000 worth of bills in the next three weeks that I have to pay.
00:16I just want to say thank you to the person who donated to my GoFundMe, you are amazing.
00:20They've given you $45,000.
00:22What?
00:30There was a time where GoFundMe was used primarily for what we would consider fun things.
00:36Someone wanted to go on vacation and I couldn't quite swing it.
00:38It was not, oh, I just got diagnosed with cancer and I'm going to die if this doesn't work.
00:48A very small proportion of these campaigns actually succeed.
00:52So if we look at the campaigns that meet their goals, it's only about 10 to 12%.
00:56More than a third of campaigns get zero donations whatsoever.
01:00What we're looking at in terms of the kind of success likelihood is
01:03way lower than you would expect it to be if you're just kind of glancing through GoFundMe's website.
01:14Took a $1,700 ambulance ride.
01:18That's only the beginning of it.
01:20Why does the American health care system allow patients to get charged
01:23$600,000, $1.1 million for a hospital bill?
01:27Need to limit the price of hospital bills because no one should go bankrupt over getting sick.
01:42I really hate to do this, but I have to.
01:45GoFundMe now exists as this weird backup to our insurances.
01:48It's people asking for assistance because they are trapped and completely out of options.
01:51It's people who are going to die if that GoFundMe page is not successful.
01:57For a lot of people, they think that they can just like,
02:06you know, tell a good story and put up some good pictures
02:09and it will be enough to get some help, right?
02:13Even if they don't get a ton, they'll get something.
02:16And what we don't see is that there's a lot of hustle involved in a lot of these campaigns
02:20or a lot of like having friends with large social media followings
02:25or with PR experience, you know, or connections to local media.
02:30I thought that people would come together and that people would,
02:33you know, look at this little girl on all the pictures.
02:36You know, it's, oh, like, like, like, like, like.
02:38So I'm like, oh, well, if they know this, they'll definitely, you know, 10, 20 bucks.
02:42It wasn't like that.
02:43It's not really an equal playing field for everyone who's starting crowdfunding campaigns,
02:47you know, largely because different groups have different levels of
02:51economic security, but also, you know, face different social biases.
03:03So there was a special open enrollment period earlier this year,
03:08and we essentially advertised that on our homepage,
03:11encouraging people to go and get themselves coverage.
03:17And I talked to a lot of people who have crowdfunded and
03:26felt like their campaign really helped them
03:29emotionally through a very hard time in their lives.
03:32We need to be clear about what it's not getting us right, which is it's not,
03:36it's not paying off people's medical debts in any super meaningful way.
03:40It's not making up for, you know, the rates of uninsurance that we have in the U.S.
03:47So we need to be clear about what it's not getting us right.