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GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ideas and dreams,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “for life’s important moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need. Now GoFundMe has become a go-to platform for patients trying to escape medical billing nightmares.

One study found that, in 2020, the annual number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes — about 200,000 — was 25 times the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. More than 500 current campaigns are dedicated to asking for financial help for treating people, mostly kids, who have spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic condition. The recently approved gene therapy for young children with the condition, by the drugmaker Novartis, has a price tag of about $2.1 million for the single-dose treatment.

Perhaps the most …

Medicare Advantage is on the hot seat.

High-profile critics like Don Berwick and Richard Gilfillan have called it the “Money Machine” in the pages of Health Affairs because of profit it has delivered to health system stakeholders.

Congressional inquiries have been launched into questionable Medicare Advantage marketing and clinical practices.

And some, like California Congressman Ro Khanna, have gone so far as to opine that Medicare Advantage plans should not be able to use the term “Medicare” to describe themselves, even introducing legislation to this effect.

And, yet, Medicare Advantage continues to grow apace with more than 30 million Americans—more than 50% of all people eligible for Medicare—choosing Medicare Advantage over traditional Medicare.

Why?

The answer is simple. The traditional Medicare program—which well-served generations of American—has failed to provide …