Health care crisis gold mine for crowdfunding

Crowdfunding platforms such as GoFundMe and YouCaring have turned sympathy for Americans drowning in medical expenses into a cottage industry.

Now Republican efforts in Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act could swell the ranks of the uninsured and spur the business of helping people raise donations online to pay for health care.

But medical crowdfunding doesn't have to wait for Congress to act. Business already is booming, and its leaders expect the rapid growth to continue no matter what happens on the Hill.

'Whether it's Obamacare or Trumpcare, the weight of health care costs on consumers will only increase,” said Dan Saper, CEO of YouCaring. 'It will drive more people to try and figure out how to pay health care needs, and crowdfunding is in its early days as a way to help those people.”

At industry leader GoFundMe, medical is one of the biggest fundraising categories. CEO Rob Solomon has said it's what 'helped define and put GoFundMe on the map ' and has called the company, founded in 2010, 'a digital safety net.”

That net grew wider this year with GoFundMe's acquisition of CrowdRise, which was co-founded by the actor Edward Norton. It adds to the company's business helping people raise funds for charities and sends those who need funds for 'medical bills, a friend's tuition, a group volunteer trip or any personal cause” to GoFundMe.

Growth has been rapid. In a September 2015 LinkedIn post, Solomon wrote that the one million campaigns set up over the previous year had raised $1 billion from nearly 12 million donors. By February 2016, the total was $2 billion.

In October 2016, it was $3 billion, from 25 million donors. A NerdWallet study of medical crowdfunding said GoFundMe had indicated that $930 million of the $2 billion raised in the period the study analyzed was from medical campaigns.

YouCaring, meanwhile, acquired GiveForward this year. Medical fundraisers made up 70 percent of GiveForward's campaigns. The combined companies have eight million donors who have contributed $800 million to a wide range of campaigns.

A big part of that total was donated to medical campaigns, according to the company. It was approaching 50 percent of all fundraisers at YouCaring before the acquisition, and the growth rate is set to triple this year, Saper said.