We Don’t Have Health Insurance but We Do Have GoFundMe

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

GoFundMe acts as the strings on the marionette that is the American health care system. Without it, we’d be at the mercy of medical expenses and all their weight. 

GoFundMe supports over 250,000 medical campaigns with over $650 million raised in donations. With one in three campaigns tied to medical expenses, we see a troubling reality. People are in crisis over unforeseen medical costs. Sudden death leaves a family grieving and in need of financial assistance. These families are out of options and turn to friends and strangers alike for aid. 

GoFundMe started with the hope that a person could make their ideas come to life through the power of crowdfunding. It promised that innovation could come from anyone, not just the wealthy. It promised that a good idea can rise to the top if enough people believed in it.

In a COVID-19 world, our businesses went under or struggled to pay workers. Untimely deaths lead to unexpected funeral and medical costs. 

With millions unemployed, income shriveled up in households. Without substantial aid from the government for the majority of the pandemic, expenses kept piling up. With limited income and tight budgets, it made sense for those in need to turn to crowdsourcing platforms for aid. 

What we saw was community members banding together to protect their landmarks and history. Thousands of GoFundMe campaigns were started for locations near and dear to the hearts of the locals. They saw the power of pooling resources, no matter how scarce, and decided that the only thing that could save their history was each other. 

Take the Birdland in New York City for example. 

“Yet another one of New York’s most beloved venues is in danger of closing for good. The legendary Birdland Jazz Club has been a fixture in the jazz community and one of NYC’s hottest destinations, since it was founded in 1949, can be added to the list of venues which can no longer afford to operate,” the campaign description states. 

The Birdland is in need of $250,000. So far, caring people have donated $228,804, nearly reaching its goal. 

The $220,000 still seems so far away. Yet, what was raised should be celebrated as a victory. Many campaigns are stuck somewhere in between their desired goal and zero. Both a celebration and a plight. Everyday people, through the power of relatively small donations, have been pushing off the death of their communities one dollar at a time. But still, they need so much more to solve their problems. This valiant effort and a showcase of community strength because they need what a majority of Americans needed even before COVID-19 gripped our social reality: structural change.

The success stories on GoFundMe are few and far between. For every campaign that hit its goal, there are many more that are stuck in limbo. $10 of $10,000. $250 of $150,000. The site’s algorithm favors campaigns with recent donations. With this in mind, finding someone’s health crisis inadvertently turns into a popularity contest.

Just as quickly as their misfortune occurred, those in need must become marketing experts. In the sea of tragedy and good causes, how does one make sure their own cause gets enough attention to garner a donation? Not everyone can go viral. Not every campaign can reach its goal. 

Think of those that are stuck halfway to their goal. Think of those that still need three years’ worth of salary to reach the next milestone. What a dystopian world we live in where only the best-marketed tragedies are the ones that receive appropriate help.

“Create a unique hashtag for your fundraiser that makes it easy for people to find and follow it on social media. Pair it with hashtags associated with your cause or event,” the GoFundMe website states.

“Customizing your fundraiser URL makes it easy for friends and family to identify and share the link to your fundraiser,” it advises. 

“Tell a unique story that’s easy to skim.”

The gamification of crowdfunding saps the individualism from those in need and reduces them to marketing strategies. No longer is the campaign revolved around the cause but rather for the aesthetics of said cause.

Imagine you needed to start a GoFundMe campaign. How would you make sure people see it? Not just your friends but their friends and friends of their friends. What was once private now is now one search away. Your private medical information has to be made public. Even still, your cause is one of the thousands on the platform.

If you search “fight” on GoFundMe, 693,735 campaigns appear. “Surgery” reveals 1,104,204. “Funeral” draws 1,079,666. “Hope” searches for 799,054. 

In a just world, families are not victims to chance. If it’s possible to help those in need, it should be a moral imperative to do so. It should not be the responsibility of the working class with stressors and expenses of their own to tend to the wounds inflicted by the system in which they exist. As hard-nosed and hard-working the working class is in this country, these attributes can only take us so far.

The working class is using socialist concepts to solve their issues. Wealth distribution is the family of three finding $50 for a neighbor’s funeral costs. It’s the middle-aged man donating $200 to the restaurant where he saw the world series that one summer with his father. It’s the young girl with $5 in her wallet that tells her mom to donate it to the man standing outside the Walmart.

In essence, GoFundMe uses the concept of communal resources and expands that to anyone that would like to help create and sustain it. Although valiant, support does not need to come from those with the least. It can come from those that hoard resources to the detriment of us all. Communities can be sustained by the economic systems at play. Then and only then can these communities be fully enjoyed by the people that comprise them. 

If our basic needs are met, we have time to not worry as much as we do about survival. Think of your parents or your grandparents. How hard did they have to work and struggle to get you to where you are today. And how often do we stress about rent and our phone bill? How many of us are paying off student loans until we’re in our 30s? How much does that life-changing medication cost you? If those everyday, unpreventable circumstances stop plaguing the working class, perhaps we would all have more time to innovate. 

Innovation is a luxury many of us don’t have. Creativity is something we only entertain after our 9-5 jobs. We have to make time to live the life we want to live. 

If we can meet the very base of the hierarchy of needs, imagine what kind of happiness we can chase. 

As much as GoFundMe highlights the broken American health care system, it also highlights how deprived the working class is of self-fulfillment. 

A platform like GoFundMe should be used to sustain passion projects and creative ventures. It should be an ecosystem where people can clear financial hurdles for grassroots ideas. It should be a circumvention of big business and red tape. It should be a conduit for finding meaning in our lives by giving us the promise that a good idea can rise to the top regardless of where we come from. 

All we need is a chance. If things don’t go our way, then we can be grateful for having the opportunity because right now, we don’t even have that. 

Instead, what we have now is a life of work and thin hope of financial independence. When success is our responsibility and failure can come by chance, then do we really live in a just society?