• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

PNHP

  • Home
  • Contact PNHP
  • Join PNHP
  • Donate
  • PNHP Store
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Health Justice Monitor

Charity Doesn’t Fill the Health Care Void

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Summary: St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis TN promises not to bill families for medical care. And they don’t. But parents travel long distances to get this free care, incurring new living expenses and losing job income. Even as St. Jude amasses huge reserves from highly effective charitable fund-raising. With single payer, everyone could get needed care, usually locally. Isn’t that more charitable?


St. Jude Hoards Billions While Many of Its Families Drain Their Savings, ProPublica, November 12, 2010, by David Armstrong and Ryan Gabrielson


St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital promises not to bill families. But the cost of having a child at the hospital for cancer care leaves some families so strapped for money that parents share tips on spending nights in the parking lot.

St. Jude is the largest and most highly regarded health care charity in the country. Each year, the Memphis hospital’s fundraisers send out hundreds of millions of letters, many with heart-wrenching photographs of children left bald from battling cancer.

Last year, St. Jude raised a record $2 billion. U.S. News & World Report ranked it the country’s 10th-best children’s cancer hospital, and St. Jude raised roughly as much as the nine hospitals ahead of it put together. It currently has $5.2 billion in reserves, a sum large enough to run the institution at current levels for the next four and a half years without a single additional donation.

But for many families, 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, a ProPublica investigation has found.

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.

A substantial portion of the cost for treatment is paid not by St. Jude but by families’ private insurance or by Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income families. About 90% of patients are insured, bringing in more than $100 million in reimbursements for treatment a year.

Parents at St. Jude have exhausted savings and retirement accounts, borrowed from family and friends or asked other charities for aid.


Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

Although the United States has a very well-funded health care system, its financing is highly dysfunctional. Too many are left either partially or completely out of the system. This is particularly tragic when a child with cancer is left uncovered, but at least some of us have charitable instincts. This accounts for the success of the nation’s most comprehensively funded children’s cancer hospital: St. Jude.

This is the best we have to offer those of limited means. But, based on this comprehensive report by ProPublica, it is still clearly insufficient, leaving many families destitute. Rather than relying on charity, wouldn’t it be better for the nation to join together and restructure our health care financing system so that it works for all of us, where we live? We certainly have enough funds. We merely need to establish an equitable, single payer, Medicare for All system.

Google “Charity.” The first item that comes up is St. Jude. With no increase in our current national spending, the first item that could come up in our hearts might be “a single payer national health program that covers everyone.” Wouldn’t that be much more effective in fulfilling our charitable aspirations?

http://healthjusticemonitor.org…


Stay informed! Subscribe to the McCanne Health Justice Monitor to receive regular policy updates via email, and be sure to follow them on Twitter @HealthJustMon.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Health Justice Monitor

  • Immigrants and Health Care
  • Premier Medical Journal Scrutinizes Corporatization of US Health Care
  • Laying out the Ill-Effects of Medicaid Cuts in the Congressional Budget Bill
  • Public Provisioning of Services: Adjunct to Single Payer
  • Health Reform Review: What’s Breaking, & Breaking Through
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Footer

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership
©2025 PNHP