Why Crowdfunded-Based Healthcare is the Future
Government-run (socialized) medicine has been hailed as the most "compassionate" healthcare model for at least a century
Ernestina’s Story
Cristina Vasquez is a Honduras citizen from the village of Monterrey, close to the maquila-powerhouse industrial city of Choloma in northern Honduras. On November 21st, 2024, her mother Ernestina Mejia suffered a brain hemorrhage while at their house in the village.
At the moment they did not know what was happening to her, so Cristina and other family members took her mom to the nearby city of San Pedro Sula, to a private hospital (Clinica Ferraro) where they ran some tests on her and discovered the cause of her symptoms. At the hospital they told her that surgery was required to solve this problem, from which her mother could very well die if not taken care of on time. They got quotes from 2 separate private hospitals who quoted between $20,000 (Hospital CEMESA) and $40,000 (Hospital del Valle) for the surgery (in $USD). This was too much money for them as they are a poor family, financially speaking. So Ernestina’s family members decided to take her to San Pedro Sula’s public hospital, also known as “Catarino Rivas”, there they told them that for that surgery to take place in a public hospital, they would have to take Ernestina to the city of Tegucigalpa, to the country’s main public hospital known as “Hospital Escuela”.
Background
The Honduras Constitution states that “Healthcare is a human right”. And to that end, the govermnent runs a “Health Ministry” to “manage” the countries public hospital system. So, it’s basically a pretty standard socialist-based government-run healthcare system.
The only problem is, almost all of the public hospitals are highly disfunctinonal entities, reflecting the mismanagement and especially corruption in the so-called the “Health Ministry”. Getting a non-emergency medical appointment can take years of waiting, and many times the hospitals’ pharmacies are not well stocked and also there are usually zero medical supplies for the execution of surgical procedures. A completely dysfunctional system.
Ernestina’s Nightmare
Ernestina’s family got her to the “Hospital Escuela” in Tegucigalpa (capital city of Honduras), only to find out that, as is customary, there were zero medical supplies available in the hospital for her mother’s much needed surgery.
A member of Hospital Escuela’s staff gave Ernestina’s daughter, Cristina, a list of the medical supplies that they would need to buy from their own pockets in order for her mother to have her surgery at the “public hospital”.
So, Cristina launched a “Crowdfunding” campaing with the help of people from her place of origin, the Monterrey village. The people’s response was absolutely massive and in just a couple of days they managed to secure all of the money that they needed in order to buy just the medical supplies for her mother’s surgery. The total raised was approximately $13,500USD. Even Honduras immigrants who lived in the USA pitched in and gave some money to the cause.
By Monday very early in the morning (November 25th), Cristina and her other family members executed the purchase of the much needed medical supplies, and to their surprise, they were told by hospital staff that they would be doing the surgery until Friday, November 29th, thus putting the life of Ernestina in serious peril.
My take
The situation described above perfectly sums up what MANY people living in corrupt-socialist run countries have to face every time they get sick. The so-called “compassionate” approach to healthcare doesn’t work in reality because, in these socialist governed countries, the public “ministries” who are in charge of managing hospitals, clinics and the like, are full of 1)incompetent people and 2)most especially corrupt people who lack any moral compass and are in their jobs only to see how much money they can steal from the government funds.
If Cristina managed to crowdfund “just” the $13,500USD that she needed for the medical supplies for her mother’s surgery, then we can be quite sure that if she had asked for $20,000 in the crowdfunding campaing, she would’ve raised that amount, and would’ve been able to have the surgery done in a private hospital were certainly it would’ve been done in a timely manner. (I say $20,000 because in Hospital CEMESA they quoted her that amount for the whole surgery, including the medical supplies).
So, you have to wonder, what is the purpose of the health ministry in Honduras? What is the purpose of public hospitals in Honduras? From reading Ernestina’s and her family’s (mis)adventure, it’s easy to conclude that the socialist-run governmental approach to healthcare in the country of Honduras is a total and complete failure. Cristina could’ve perfectly crowdfunded the $20,000 needed for the surgery to take place in a private hospital, and for sure the hospital would’ve proceeded with it as quickly as humanly possible, thus taking Ernestina’s life out of danger of death (which was very real the more time they waited for the surgery to take place).
Conclusion
My conclusion is that, eventually, government-run socialized medicine is destined to fail (in all parts of the world were it’s applied, even in so-called “developed nations” like in Europe and Canada). Ernestina’s situation forces us to recognize the failures of this type of healthcare system. And this type of corrupt and mismanaged system is what prevails in many countries of the world (especially, but not exclusively, underdeveloped ones). Thankfully, a well-managed and technically sound platform called CrowdHealth is now revolutionizing the healthcare system with its focus on “crowdfunding”, rather than “insuring” its customers. So far, the CrowdHealth model has been successfully applied in the USA, having started only a few years ago in 2021. It recently boasted on social media of its 10,000th customer. Let’s hope their customer base only keeps expanding more and more, so that their example might shine even brighter and there might be other companies like CrowdHealth in other parts of the world.
In the same way Twitter (X) is killing traditional TV News outlets, so is CrowdHealth poised to destroy both the traditional health insurance model AND also the socialized-government run healthcare model in the near future.
If you want to know more, please visit: joincrowdhealth.com
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This article was written with information obtained from the following sources:
https://x.com/Qhubotvoficial/status/1862142669293564158
https://x.com/TSiHonduras/status/1862145999105388806 (whole thread)