Healthcare Digest 5/3: Crowd-Funding Healthcare is Probably the Future

Crowd-funding: where you make a plea, on the Internet, say, or at the grocery store in one of those cans, or via a car wash — I’m not going to list all the ways; I’m sure you get it.

Crowd-funding is gaining visibility in the healthcare arena. Medical care in this country continues to cost ridiculous amounts of dollars while most Americans have considerably fewer dollars than ever before for things like medical care. So we end up with crowd-funding.

Some things you might want to consider:

1) Taxes: “As you can imagine, if you’re going to embark on a serious effort to raise money for a loved one’s medical bills, consult a tax professional.”

2) Crowd-Funding Sites: “Sites like GoFundMe.com and GiveForward.com…allow people to mobilize by collecting money and sharing the person’s story in a meaningful way.”

3) There Are a LOT of People Crowd-Funding Right Now: “Yes, social media is amazing, but perhaps because there are so many people on Facebook and Twitter with their own agendas, or because consumers still feel cash-strapped in this post-recession economy, it takes some serious reaching out to get people to donate.”

4) Consider Other Resources: “When her 27-year-old sister, Alison, was diagnosed last year with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Meghan Pochebit of Los Angeles jumped into the fundraising fray. But Pochebit knew she’d need help, so she went to the Cancer Legal Resource Center in Los Angeles.”

5) Don’t Forget Your Manners: “I sent a personal thank you to every single person who donated, at least five days within their donation. If you can’t do it alone, ask someone to help you. Building those personal relationships encouraged donors to spread the word and help fundraise, but more importantly, it created a network of support for Ali that our entire family relies on to this day.”

Friday’s Headlines

I’m Still Not Entirely Sure What the Cloud Even IS: “A recent study by the firm MarketsandMarkets indicates that the healthcare cloud computing market, which is only currently about 4% of the industry, is expected to grow to nearly $5.4 billion by 2017. The cloud migration process, however, can be daunting for healthcare organizations since they have to move a ton of data.” [Forbes.com]

This Sounds Like a Great Use of People’s Time: “A group of individuals and businesses filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration’s healthcare overhaul on Thursday, hoping to stop the law in states that have not set up new insurance exchanges.” [Reuters]

Another Threat to Employees from Employers Who Don’t Want to Pay for Healthcare: “Hundreds of thousands of part-timers are facing smaller paychecks as employers cut worker hours to avoid paying for their benefits under the federal healthcare law.” [Los Angeles Times]

The Most Important Thing About Healthcare Reform is That No One Understands Healthcare Reform: “The health industry will be the largest creator of wealth in the 21st century . Yet the explosive growth in the health industry could create a new wealth divide. People often talk about the healthcare divide in terms of access to care. It’s now time to discuss the healthcare divide among workers, businesses and investors in terms of wealth generation.” [Forbes.com]