Americans increasingly paying medical bills through crowdfunding, study shows

Twenty-seven percent of the over 1 million fundraisers on GoFundMe from May 2010 to December 2018 were held to help patients cover medical costs, according to research published Jan. 11 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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The 281 ,881 medical bill-focused fundraising campaigns posted on the website from May 2010 to December 2018 sought about $10 .3 billion. As of April 2019, the campaigns had raised about $3.7 billion.

Forty-two medical bill-focused fundraisers were housed on the website in 2010, with that number increasing to 119,373 in 2018. The most common type of medical bill-focused campaigns were for patients with cancer (35 percent), trauma and injuries (19 percent) and neurological conditions (17 percent).

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