“Can people afford to pay for health care?” a report from the World Health Organization asked and answered, with a focus on European health citizens.

The same question underpins a new research paper published in Health Affairs Scholar, Insights from crowdfunding campaigns for medical hardship, Here, crowdfunding is a proxy for “can’t afford to pay for health care” in America.

Here in blazing colors we have a snapshot of the study’s data in the form of a “heatmap.”  FYI, a heatmap is a data visualization format that represents the magnitude of values of a dataset as a color — generally “hotter” or more intense at the top of the chart compared with the information at the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chart organizes data scraped from GoFundMe campaigns online, including the campaign, tags, goals, and location. The process was conducted between May 30 and July 31, 2024, for campaigns tagged “medical” supporting humans in the U.S.

You can see the “hottest” financial target by medical concern was medical bills, followed by living expenses and in third place, lost income due to missing or losing work.

These targets were consistent across the conditions analyzed, which in order of “hotness” included cancers (37% of the campaigns), surgery/transplant (28%), vehicle accidents (17%), musculoskeletal (15%), as well as heart conditions, rare diseases, natal care (that is maternal and birth covering fertility, pregnancy/delivery, and neonatal intensive care), kidney disease, mental health, gun violence, diabetes, and COVID.

There are differences across medical conditions regarding just what funders are seeking funding for: for example, for people seeking support for natal care, folks are looking to supplement their resources for childcare and transportation. Among patients campaigning for funding to deal with musculoskeletal conditions, the researches saw greater rates of need for durable medical equipment, home care, and retrofitting vehicles for accessibility.

But there are some universal themes that were common across patients across medical needs. “Financial needs related to cost of living, housing, food, and bills (have) a similar prevalence across medical condition categories,” the researchers found. “These needs are crucial, but not sufficiently addressed by current public programs,” the authors assert.

Bottom-line: the prevalence of medical crowdfunding campaigns reveals unmet needs, and beyond support for funding clinical trial participation or customized medical equipment, those unmet needs are largely the costs of daily living and functioning in a U.S. household. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  In their recent report, From Cradle to Cane, WHO analyzed European health citizens’ health status across the region — including the topic of catastrophic health spending across the member states.

“Catastrophic health spending occurs when the amount a household pays out of pocket exceeds 40% of its capacity to pay for health care,” the EU defines.
“This may mean the household can no longer afford to meet other basic needs (food, housing and utilities).”

In Europe, WHO’s report Can people afford to pay for health care? tells us that among the 24 high- and middle-income countries in the region, catastrophic health spending is mainly due to outpatient medicines costs, followed by inpatient care and dental care. “Outpatient medicines are an important source of financial hardship in many countries and among the poorest quintile in most countries….(where) out-of-pocket payments for medicines lead to both financial hardship and unmet need for poorer people,” the report describes. Specifically,

“Weaknesses in coverage policy undermine equity and efficiency by creating financial barriers to access; shifting the financial burden of paying for health care on those who can least afford it — poor people and regular users of health services.”

I can’t help trying to shake off a sort of simultaneous déjà vu in this statement when working now on the dual challenges in U.S. health policy of (1) prescription drug pricing reforms coupled with (2) legislation being considered/reconsidered/reconciled for the future of Medicaid and the ACA. It’s that phrase, “shifting the financial burden of paying for health care on those who can least afford it.”

Sometimes, it feels like the world is flat….at least my dual worlds of U.S. and European health care….