As healthcare bills climb, patients and their families are increasingly turning to the Internet to crowdfund medical debt, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Even those with insurance are launching campaigns on websites like GoFundMe or GiveForward to cover deductibles, coinsurance and out-of-network costs. In fact, medical campaigns are the most common type of campaigns on these sites, according to the report.
On GiveForward, 70 percent of all crowdfunding campaigns are medical, and medical campaigns on GoFundMe had increased to 602,000 last year — more than 73 times the number of medical campaigns hosted on the site just a few years earlier in 2011. GoFundMe has raised more than $196 million for medical causes, according to the report.
Ethan Austin, co-founder of GiveForward, says consumer demand, the high cost of healthcare and the power of campaigns to actually work are the driving forces behind the medical crowdfunding trend, according to the report.
The fundraising pages also offer emotional support: A 4-year-old leukemia patient's fundraising page has garnered hundreds of comments, which has helped keep the little girl and her family going, her mother told U.S. News and World Report.
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