GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ideas and dreams,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “for life’s important moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need. Now GoFundMe has become a go-to platform for patients trying to escape medical billing nightmares.
One study found that, in 2020, the annual number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes — about 200,000 — was 25 times the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. More than 500 current campaigns are dedicated to asking for financial help for treating people, mostly kids, who have spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic condition. The recently approved gene therapy for young children with the condition, by the drugmaker Novartis, has a price tag of about $2.1 million for the single-dose treatment.
I know the standard reddit response to a comment was “Not with that attitude!” but that’s literally the case here.
When Social Security was first proposed, it was opposed by the American Medical Association and Ronald Reagan released an LP record saying it was going to lead to a communist takeover of America. There was in fact a whole push along those lines.
It still got passed because Americans were behind it.
The information warfare landscape is lined up to allow for complete corporate advantage. Take a look at the cases against the US government putting warning labels on cigarettes equivalent to those in Australia. Take a look at masking policies and regulations against disinformation or hate speech.
Things can change, but there’s a causal relationship there that’s going to have to change first.