The DeVos Family Can GoFundThemselves
By: The Skewer
Tags: Healthcare, Gofundme, Devos, Health

by Maggie Tomasek

A letter from Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan denying a heart transplant due to patient’s lack of funds, and explicitly advising patient to raise $10,000 for surgery.

Hey, here’s a fun fact: last year alone, Americans raised $650 million dollars for health care expenses through GoFundMe.

Wow! How inspiring! How amazing! How FUCKED UP IS THAT.

We may have hit a new level of “what the fuck” in the medical expense crowdfunding trend with this story: A couple weeks ago, a heart transplant patient in Michigan was rejected as a candidate because she couldn’t afford the follow-up care. And then, the hospital actually had the fucking audacity to recommend a “$10,000 fundraising effort” in their official “rejection” letter. I’m not kidding.

I guess instead of GoFundMe, they really should be calling it GoFuckYourself.

Maybe it should also come as no surprise that this letter came from the Spectrum Health Richard DeVos Heart and Lung Transplant Center — named for the billionaire father-in-law of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a man who has been swindling people out of their money for years with Amway and pushing the idea that “if you’re not wealthy, then you’re just not working hard enough.” So yeah, very on brand.

By the way, I’ve been listening to this awesome podcast called “The Dream,” which is all about multi-level marketing companies like Amway, and hooboy, just when I thought I couldn’t be more disgusted by the DeVoses, I’ve been learning SO MUCH about the shady shit Richard DeVos and Amway have been doing for DECADES and how they’ve helped influence the laws in this country to allow MLMs, which are 100 percent actually pyramid schemes, to rip people off with zero consequences. Anyway, go check out that podcast, and then you can talk about everything you learned with your friend from high school that’s trying to sell you leggings on Facebook. Good times!

Anyhoozleby, this woman in Michigan can’t get a fucking heart transplant because she can’t afford the medication she’ll need afterward. And this hospital won’t even PUT HER ON THE TRANSPLANT WAITING LIST until she raises $10,000. Surgery is expensive enough, but the post-surgery care can REALLY get you too. All the follow-up appointments and tests and scans and medication that you could be on for weeks or months or the rest of your life.

So in essence, what the hospital is saying to this woman is, “Hey, you’re too poor to be worthy of having your life saved, so maybe you can ask strangers on Twitter to help you out and then we’ll re-consider if you’re worthy of having your life saved. Hope you have a lot of followers!” I mean, this scheme works for selling Amway products, so why not the health care system, amirite?

It’s no wonder that medical expenses are the №1 reason why Americans go bankrupt.

So, a little story about me. Two years ago this month, I got an ear infection, and then my ear drum ruptured. I went to the doctor, he gave me some ear drops and antibiotics, and sent me on my way. It was super painful and kept getting worse. I had a really high fever for 4 days, I was just sweating through my pajamas and sheets, and like sipping Pedialyte through a straw, with the worst headache of my life. I mean my god.

Now, if I didn’t have good health insurance, I might not have gone back to the doctor, I might have tried to wait it out. Like, oh the antibiotics just haven’t kicked in yet, this fever is gonna break any second now. But, I do have good health insurance, so I dragged my butt back to the doctor, and he took one look at me and said, “you need to go to the ER and get a CT scan. Right now.” Do you know how expensive an emergency room visit is?? And a CT scan? So, if I didn’t have good health insurance, I might have hesitated.

But I went to the ER and got the CT scan, and the scan showed that there was something in my skull that was pressing on my ear cavity and had reached the lining of my brain, and I needed to have emergency surgery immediately.

If I had waited, hesitated, what turned out to be a cyst the size of a golf ball in my head might have become even more infected, and that infection might have gone past my brain lining and into my brain. And I might be dead.

Spoiler alert: I lived. And I came away with a baller head scar to boot. Even better!

Now, if I didn’t have good health insurance, the ER visit; the CT scan; the ambulance ride to another hospital; the ICU admission; the overnight MRI; the four-hour emergency brain surgery with one of the best neurosurgeons in the country; the 5-day hospital stay; the visits from neurosurgeons, ENT surgeons, infectious disease doctors, ophthalmologists, occupational therapists and physical therapists; the prescriptions; the post-release MRI; missing 6 weeks of work, and ongoing follow-up appointments with all of the aforementioned doctors, plus months of physical therapy would have sent me into financial ruin.

And I’m not even talking about the logistics of going to all of these follow-up appointments and therapy. I don’t have to arrange for child care or beg my employer to switch my schedule around so I can take 4 hours off to get an MRI on a Monday morning. I also had to miss 6 weeks of work from this ordeal, so thank god my job has good short-term disability benefits. But that’s a whole OTHER issue for another day.

So I completely get why people don’t go to the doctor when they’re sick. You tell yourself, “oh it’s probably nothing, I’ll be fine,” because what you’re REALLY thinking is “what if I go to the doctor and it’s something serious, what the fuck happens then?” Not only because you might have to face your own mortality or whatever, but because you might not be able to pay for treatment to fix whatever is actually wrong with you.

People are literally dying because they’re being forced to make that decision, between their health and not going bankrupt. Because another fun fact, the majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, so even a minor medical emergency can be a monumental burden. And for the richest country on earth, that is an unbelievable travesty.

I know this is supposed to be a comedy show, y’all, but shit is dire.

So yes, it’s great that people are helping out their fellow citizens by supporting GoFundMe campaigns that pay for medical expenses. All I’m saying is, THAT SHOULDN’T BE OUR HEALTH CARE PLAN. And for fuck’s sake, ACTUAL HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS shouldn’t be telling people that’s their best or only course of action to get the care they need.

I know how privileged I am to have a good job with good, affordable health insurance, but it shouldn’t be a privilege. It should be a right. So, you know, make sure your representatives know that, and all that junk.

And finally, just to wrap up, I’d like to say go fuck yourself to Richard DeVos and his whole corrupt, immoral family of dipshits.

Maggie Tomasek is a writer, comic, runner and rapper, who spits rhymes as MagRock with She’s Crafty, Chicago’s all-female Beastie Boys tribute band.

This piece was presented at The Skewer’s live show, Wednesday, December 5th, 2018 at Cafe Mustache in Chicago. Listen to the whole show here: https://soundcloud.com/theskewer/the-skewer-35-december-2018?in=theskewer/sets/the-skewer-all-editions