The wealthy have pulled out of the orbit of the rest of the country. Can they be leashed back?
By late October, the best grasp of America’s perilous economic situation was coming from GoFundMe, the internet’s largest donation platform. The website had already become a de facto large insurance company, as hundreds of thousands of patients struggling with exorbitant medical bills started fundraising campaigns every year. By 2019, one-third of all donations on GoFundMe went toward health care costs, according to former CEO Rob Solomon.
But the pandemic created a new kind of precarity in America. From March 1 to August 31, just 3.2 percent of all donation campaigns went toward medical bills. Demand grew so much for other needs that GoFundMe announced a new fundraising category: Rent, Food, and Monthly Bills.
