Now, the 28-year-old has started chemotherapy, a GoFundMe organized on his behalf has well surpassed its $30,000 goal, and Walmart has agreed to provide him with the health insurance coverage he needs.
DePew, who works at a Walmart in rural Putnam County, Florida, told More Perfect Union that as a part-time employee, he didn’t have health insurance when he received his diagnosis. Meanwhile, he said a single urologist visit that cost him $320 had left him "completely broke."
While DePew waits for his coverage to kick in, the fundraiser says donations will “help bridge the gap” for now. Moneywise reached out to Walmart, but the company was unable to comment on this specific case.
Thanks to the support of his community, DePew is on the road to recovery and has the financial support to fund it. But, unfortunately, he’s far from the only patient who has had to turn to strangers in order to pay for life-saving healthcare.
Others have crowdfunded healthcare too, and most fall short
While DePew’s fundraiser managed to pass its $30,000 goal, that result is often the exception.
An American Cancer Society study of more than 78,000 cancer-related GoFundMe campaigns from January 2021 to February 2023 found they raised $506 million, which was just 34.5% of the $1.47 billion requested. Furthermore, only 11.5% of campaigns hit their targets within 90 days, and the median campaign raised $4,000 against a $10,000 goal.
But it isn’t just cancer patients who struggled to crowdsource funding for treatment. A study from the University of Washington that focused on 437,000 medical GoFundMe campaigns from 2016 to 2020 found that fewer than 12% met their goals, and campaigns raised less in states with more uninsured residents and more medical debt.
While many who crowdsource funding for medical procedures often fall short of their goals, the more troubling aspect is just how normal this practice has become.
“Perhaps the most damning aspect of this is that paying for expensive care with crowdfunding is no longer seen as unusual; instead, it is being normalized as part of the health system, like getting bloodwork done or waiting on hold for an appointment,” Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote in a KFF Health News report.
