I am not from the US. Had my close relative fight with cancer. If not for the government which sponsored it almost fully, excluding a couple of procedures like PET, it would cost our family a lot. Just for the scale: pial for one infusion of one out of three drugs would cost us $8k and my relative would’ve needed 16 infusions.

    • d00phy@lemmy.world
      3·
      13 hours ago

      Yeah, it’s easy to think people are joking about using Go Fund Me for medical treatments, but it’s real. More than that, you’ll see news stories here about people donating their money so a kid can get some treatment, or their time off so that a parent can take a kid to their treatment, and they’re treated like “feel good” stories about communities banding together rather than the dystopian hellscape that they really are. The US is capitalism run amok, and the populations of other countries really should take notice before their wealthy classes succeed in making the same political decisions that got us here. It’s already happening in the EU.

    • delta@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      17 hours ago

      they are being serious, though. a lot of people in the US use fundraising platforms like GFM in order to afford medical treatments. not just cancer, but other important surgeries, medical devices, service animals, etc. even if they have health insurance. insurance companies can semi-arbitrarily decide if the issue is “severe” enough to warrant full coverage (or coverage period).