… apparently Mary Lou was uninsured while residing in a 6-bedroom, 6-bath, 9,000 SF Houston, TX mansion with a swimming pool.
That daughter with the GoFundMe campaign is starting to look like a grifter to me. {{ LOL }}
Also this tragic story points out the inequities of America’s health care system. Health insurance was expensive for Mary Lou because she had millions of dollars of annual wage & salary income in endorsements and speaking fees. If she had $100 million of Berkshire Hathaway stock and did a better job of managing her taxable income, she could have qualified for “free Obamacare”. The dumbest thing you can do in America, health care and tax-wise, is to work for a living.
HA! Even if she had to pay full freight for the Obamacare I think she could have managed it without settling for a lesser cable TV package or switching to store brand Cheerios. This is not an economic issue. It’s a brain function issue.
The New York Times has some helpful information on crowd funding your medical disasters. It works best if you’re a celebrity, a young blonde female, or live in a wealthy neighborhood. Blacks and Hispanics in poorer environs generally collect much less money, if anything at all. Also, Americans are more likely to help an injured dog or cat than a human with the same disability. I guess that’s what makes us “exceptional”.
The $uckers do realize that if she leaves behind medical debt in reality she won’t be paying it. Even if she lives she probably won’t pay it. She knows the system.
I’m pretty sure the daughter knows that what’s left of the estate would go to the hospital to satisfy the medical debt. The funeral home and medical debt are typically first in line at probate. Thus, the grift of the GoFundMe.
The GoFundMe is lining the pockets of the heirs, not helping to save Mary Lou.
Right now there is no way to tell because of a fact blackout imposed by the family members running the Go Fund Me thing. To respect her privacy, of course.
I suspect: 1) She is not well. She has something. Pneumonia is not pleasant and she is 55.
It is being overblown the way a 5 year old accidentally pokes himself with a #2 pencil then tells his friends he got “lead poisoning.”
Unclear. But the story apparently passed the “sniff test” at GoFundMe. GoFundMe starts to do some “due diligence” once the prize pot reaches a certain size (e.g. $100,000?) lest the platform gets embarrassed by a fraudster.
The hospital isn’t going to kick Mary Lou out of the ICU if she can’t pay the bill. They won’t even know the total cost until after she’s discharged (or dead.)
Being intubated with a rare form of pneumonia is unlikely to portend a long life expectancy.
Here’s an article from the Washington Post explaining the likely prognosis for pneumonia. Of course, the best part of the article is the 500 and growing reader’s comments which are often thoughtful and insightful {{ LOL }}.
Mary Lou apparently is good with Colonial Penn Life Insurance. I bet she’s done a commercial for Medicare Advantage, too. {{ LOL }}
Here’s a commercial she cut more recently. Maybe she has a big life insurance policy that can cover the uninsured hospital bill? She’s certainly asking the right questions.
The NYT reached one of her daughters and, in the context of a larger article about crowdfunding medical costs, asked why Mary Lou didn’t have insurance.
When another one of Ms. Retton’s daughters, Shayla Kelley Schrepfer, was reached by text, she did not respond to a question about why her mother was uninsured.
Tough, those simple questions, I guess.
Article says that many, perhaps most such crowdfunding doesn’t reach the goal, some produce nothing at all. The common denominator seems to be: if you have rich friends, you’ll be OK. If not, not.
I was just noticing. She cant seem to afford emergency life saving medical care. (I don’t really see where not having insurance is relevant here but they seem to keep harping on it to create some sort of ersatz sympathy vibe.) If you don’t have insurance: Write checks!) But… she seemed to have been wealthy enough to buy a ton of plastic facial surgery few years ago as easily seen in the video. No insurance will cover that (that I’ve ever heard of) and there was no GoFundMe intrigue with privacy concerns etc
Those books in the office appear to be props. I don’t think she does a lot of reading.
I had a similar reaction. I figured one of three things was going on.
The house was emptied during divorce proceedings and was being staged by a real estate agent – the kind that would sell an $8 million dollar monument to bad taste
Dem Texans don’t take no shine to none of that fancy book learnin’
There is zero point in building custom floor-to-ceiling bookcases in a home with nine foot ceilings whose owner is 4 foot 9 inches tall.
More seriously, even if you are unemployed and newly single after a divorce or similar fork in the relationship road, if you even got only 50% of the proceeds from the divorce that included an $8 million dollar home, even if you had to unload it $4 million, there is no excuse for not having enough money to afford barebones health insurance. If the two split the $4 million, $2 million is a TON of money to live off of. Probably 10x what the average American has. A quick Google search regarding marketplace insurance in Texas confirms Texas DOES participate in the healthcare.gov marketplace and insurance can be had for as little as $445/month.
Community Health Choice’s Community Select Silver 019 (Limited Network, No Deductible for PCP, Specialists & Generics, Free 24/7 Telehealth) is the cheapest plan in Texas, at about $445 per month.
For the really big jackpots, It seems to me to be fame. Mary Lou is still well known. These “news” stories will “advertise” her situation and result in many many many more people who “know Mary Lou” contributing $1-$10.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s petite and pretty.
Was the original story “leaked/placed” in order to garner this widespread attention? Say… By their publicist?
I’d say it’s working.
Hmmmm… But why would they cover up the covid and call it something else? I don’t think it would cause less sympathy and therefore less money coming in. If they aren’t thumping her for not having insurance and not paying retail for the care why would they take a jaundiced view of her not being vaccinated?
And what’s “a rare form” of pneumonia, anyway? It’s almost always easily treated with antibiotics and “viral pneumonia” while not treated the same way is hardly “rare.” If she has some actually rare antibiotic resistant form why not cough up the name of it? Too much cloak & dagger. Too much marketing going on here.
