Around a third of campaigns on the most popular crowdfunding site, GoFundMe, are to cover medical costs. And most campaign goals are modest, aiming to raise but a few thousand bucks. Yet, 30% of campaigns to cover medical costs in 2020 raised $0. Nada. Nothing.

The issue is that there’s not enough connection between the people who have the money to give and the people who need the money.

In the US, it’s simply a lot of very basic needs. It’s people who are being bankrupted by illness, and it’s people who do not have adequate health coverage or can’t afford their health coverage and therefore, can’t afford essential medical care.

And most important, I think, is it’s occluding this idea that everyone should be deserving of health care, that everyone should have a basic level of health care that they are entitled to regardless of what they look like, or how many friends they have, or how deserving they are by these complex and often very biased social metrics of deservingness.