Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton, 55, is in intensive care with pneumonia in a Texas hospital. Her daughter, McKenna Kelley, said her gold-medal-winning mother is \u201cfighting for her life\u201d and currently unable to breathe on her own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kelley set up a Spotfund account to raise money for her mother\u2019s medical expenses, writing that Retton does not have medical insurance. SpotFund is a crowdsourcing platform similar to GoFundMe. Retton is unusual in that respect: Just 7% of Americans of all ages, or 25.3 million people, were uninsured in the first three months of 2023, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But what\u2019s not unusual is her family turning to sites like Spotfund and GoFundMe to help pay for health costs. Medical fundraisers are the No. 1 reason for crowdsourcing on Spotfund, accounting for 27% of all the platform\u2019s fundraisers, a company spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
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\n \u201c<\/span>Medical fundraisers are the No. 1 reason for crowdsourcing on Spotfund, accounting for 27% of all the platform\u2019s fundraisers.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n One-third of GoFundMe campaigns raise money for medical bills, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health last year.\u00a0Although most people who turn to crowdsourcing to meet healthcare costs don\u2019t have an Olympic gymnast\u2019s level of name recognition. Only 12% of campaigns met their goals, and 16% received no donations at all, the study showed. <\/p>\n \u201cReturns were highly unequal, and success was low,\u201d concluded the researchers, who analyzed 437,596 medical GoFundMe campaigns in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020. They found that healthcare-related GoFundMe campaigns raised more than $2 billion from 21.7 million donations during the study period.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite its popularity and portrayals as an ad-hoc safety net, medical crowdfunding is misaligned with key indicators of health financing needs in the United States. It is best positioned to help in populations that need it the least,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n \u201cMedical fundraising is one of our largest categories,\u201d a GoFundMe spokesperson told\u00a0MarketWatch. This includes\u00a0everything\u00a0from hospital care to travel for family members.<\/p>\n As of Friday, Retton\u2019s daughter\u2019s campaign had raised $400,593 of her $50,000 goal, likely helped by her mother\u2019s status as a beloved gymnast and Olympic champion.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people turn to GoFundMe or other crowdfunding websites, ask friends and family, put charges on their credit card, but that can only go so far,\u201d said Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the program on the Affordable Care Act at KFF, a healthcare think tank. \u201cThey end up making other sacrifices like declaring bankruptcy, and losing their house or car.\u201d<\/p>\n Medicaid coverage for low-income Americans varies by state. \u201cYou have to have a very, very low income in Texas to qualify for Medicaid,\u201d Cox said. \u201cIn a different state, she might have qualified for Medicaid, but that seems unlikely here.\u201d In Texas, a one-person household must earn no more than $28,869 a year. Texas is also one of a handful of states that continues to resist Medicaid expansion.<\/p>\n About one in 10 Americans, translating to 23 million people, has significant medical debt, according to an analysis by KFF. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the direct medical costs, it\u2019s also the lost wages \u2014 not just [of] the person who\u2019s sick, but of the family members who care for them,\u201d Cox added.<\/p>\n One of the main reasons so many people turn to crowdfunding for medical debt: It usually takes people by surprise, said Patricia Kelmar, senior director of healthcare campaigns at U.S. PIRG, a public-interest research group.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n \u201c<\/span>\u2018People are looking to pay for these bills and they have to raise a lot of money in a short period of time. Some people put it on a credit card; some people ask friends and neighbors.\u2019\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p>\n \u2018A lot of people turn to GoFundMe\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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