Americans are helping people pay off their medical debt via crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe — and some are also launching these campaigns for themselves. In a survey conducted from Jan. 25 to Jan. 29, using a nationally representative sample of 1,594 U.S. adults, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that 24% of respondents have donated to a crowdfunding campaign in order to help cover someone else’s medical expenses. Of that group, 3% reported donating to crowdfunding campaigns at least five times.
When asked if they had ever started a crowdfunding campaign to pay off their own medical debt, 4% of respondents said they had, while 6% had done so for a family member. (Another 86% said they had not tried crowdfunding for themselves or a loved one, while 5% preferred not to say.)
As previously reported, the same poll found that 46% of people surveyed said they “very often” or “somewhat often” worry about how they are going to pay off their medical bills. But while crowdfunding campaigns may provide financial relief in the moment for some, they aren’t the ultimate solution for paying off medical debt. According to research published in the American Journal of Public Health, only 12% of campaigns met their goals, and 16% received no donations at all.
“The GoFundMe pages are really a barometer of a broken health care system,” Eva Marie Stahl, vice president of public policy and program management at RIP Medical Debt, tells Yahoo Life. “It's important for individuals to feel like they can find pathways to help support their unpaid medical bills, but it's not sufficient for people when they're buried under debt.”
Many people with health insurance turn to these campaigns, Stahl says, because they have high deductibles that don’t match their income level. An unexpected medical expense can leave them footing a $5,000 bill that they simply can’t cover without outside help. “Increasingly, we’re seeing insured people feeling overwhelmed by unpaid medical bills,” she says. “They’re not set up for success with their health plans, because their health plans aren’t working for them in the first place.”
Susan Cahn, a senior research scientist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) looked at data surrounding crowdfunding campaigns around medical debt. She notes that many of these campaigns are for medical events that are unexpected, such as injuries or cancer treatment. “These are not expected bills,” she says. “Even people with very solid insurance coverage cannot anticipate the risks and the affordability issues that they will face.”
While the topic of universal health care has long been politically divisive, one thing Americans on all sides of the aisle tend to agree on is that there needs to be policy solutions in place to combat medical debt. Cahn found in NORC’s research that Americans want systemic solutions to this problem, and believe that the government should work with providers, clinics and hospitals to make medical care more affordable. Without these policies, many people are leaning on others who may find themselves in their own precarious medical situation in the future.
“People who are at risk are helping other people at risk,” Cahn says, noting that 40% of Americans who donated to crowdfunding campaigns were from households with incomes of less than $60,000 per year, below the country’s current median income of $71,000. “A lot of donations are being made by Americans who themselves may be facing this issue of medical debt.”
Policy changes, Cahn notes, may include making financial assistance programs work better, or learning from changes in Medicare that reduced the cost of prescription drugs. What is clear, however, is that people want solutions that don’t involve clicking the donate button.
