Weekly Charity Match #015: Medical Expense Fundraisers

With the Republicans’ horrendous health care plan finally exposed to the light of day – including a CBO estimation of 24 million people losing their insurance, putting the nation’s uninsured rate significantly higher than it even was before the ACA – I would like to highlight the extent to which even the existing system remains insufficient.  So this is going to be a bit of an unusual week, as I don’t have one particular fundraiser in mind…

Last Week: American Immigration Council

I didn’t get any matching receipts last week, but then, I didn’t do a great job of reminding people either.  I’m making a default donation of $25.

This Week: Individual Fundraisers for Medical Expenses

Even with the Affordable Care Act driving down the percentage of uninsured people to historic lows, there are still many people who remain uninsured or underinsured for a variety of reasons.  In many cases, it’s due to some individual states’ choices to refuse to expand Medicaid as allowed under the ACA; this Kaiser Family Foundation report looks at some of the details, including the fact that 91% of the 2.5 million people that remain uninsured specifically as a result of their states’ failure to expand Medicaid live in the South.

As a result of this gap in health care coverage, many people still have to rely on the generosity of family, friends, and strangers to avoid being bankrupted and/or made homeless by the costs of their medical care.  This week, I’m going to be matching donations to individual fundraisers on GoFundMe, IndieGoGo, and elsewhere as needed.

I’ll match up to $500 in donations this week – forward your donation receipts to matching@pyrlogos.com as normal, and I’ll include every fundraiser in this post so others can contribute as well.  (If you don’t want your first name and last initial included alongside the fundraiser, just let me know in the forwarded email.)  If the donations to be matched exceed $500, I’ll make sure to donate some amount to every fundraiser, so don’t worry if you’re not one of the first few to forward your receipt.

Finally, for this week in particular, I will match donations made prior to this post.  Normally, part of the point of a matching program is to encourage others to donate when they might not have otherwise – but this week you’re encouraging me to donate instead.

Call to Action

This is especially important if your senators or representative is Republican: call your congresspeople and let them know how much of a disaster their plan to make 24 million people lose their health insurance would be.  Some Republicans are already starting to question the political wisdom of following through with the ACA repeal, and we have to keep the pressure on.