In a story involving pediatric catastrophic diseases, ProPublica has identified the real enemy: the nonprofit organization that offers free healthcare to children with life-threatening diseases.
I am not making any of this up.
ProPublica published a report this week attacking St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (which, again, offers life-saving care at no charge) for not paying every related cost incurred by the family of children with leukemia and other cancers.
St. Jude promises in its fundraising pitch that “families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live.”
ProPublica takes issue with this claim.
“[F]or many families,” the group reports, “treatment at St. Jude does not relieve all the financial burdens they incur in getting care for their children, including housing, travel and food costs that fall outside the hospital’s strict limits.”
It adds, “While families may not receive a bill from St. Jude, the hospital doesn’t cover what’s usually the biggest source of financial stress associated with childhood cancer: the loss of income as parents quit or take leave from jobs to be with their child during treatment. For many families, the consequence is missed payments for cars, utilities and cellphones. Others face eviction or foreclosure because they can’t keep up with rent and mortgage payments.”
This is a real report, published by a real news organization. This is not satire.
“In some cases,” ProPublica continues, “hotel stays en route are provided only if families travel more than 500 miles to get to St. Jude.”
That ProPublica criticizes St. Jude for offering only free life-saving healthcare to cancer-stricken children is laughable. That its specific criticism of St. Jude’s travel cost policy is caveated with the words “in some cases” is next-level, Onion-style dark humor.
On social media, ProPublica Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky promoted his organization’s report, saying, “St. Jude’s has raised $7 bil over last few years. Only half of $$ has actually gone to treatment.”
He adds, “The rest has gone to its investments and fundraising arm, which employs 2k+ people.400+ fundraisers make more than $100k.So how many beds does this juggernaut have? 73.”
Do you want to tell him not all cancer patients are in-patient? Or should I?
On a more serious note, as troubling as it is that ProPublica is attacking a group that offers free healthcare to children with serious, life-threatening diseases, it’s even more troubling that these sorts of attacks on charitable health organizations are not entirely uncommon.
Recall that FiveThirtyEight in 2018 attacked Catholic-operated hospitals in poor and remote rural communities for supposedly denying patients “standard medical service.”
And by “standard medical service,” FiveThirtyEight means abortion, transgender surgery, and euthanasia.
“It’s difficult to know what services are and are not available at each of these facilities because interpretation of Catholic doctrine is done locally by individual bishops and decisions are often made on a case-by-case basis,” the report reads. “But abortion, birth control, vasectomies, tubal ligations, some types of end-of-life care, emergency contraception and procedures related to gender transition can all be off-limits if your local hospital happens to be Catholic.”
St. Jude is bad because it doesn’t cover all travel costs, cellphone bills, and car payments. Catholic hospitals in rural areas, where healthcare is sparse, are likewise bad because they operate under the guidance of men and Catholic doctrine.
Healthcare is a human right, people. Also, the groups that provide high-quality and even free healthcare to those who would otherwise struggle to find any, or even go without it, must do everything exactly the way we say — or it’s not good enough.
