By Lori Perkins
I am so saddened by the passing of, and impressed by the life of, Casey McIntyre, the 38-year-old publisher of the YA imprint Razorbill, who fought ovarian cancer for four years, during which she had a child!!!!!, and as she knew her time was coming to a close, organized a massive campaign to fundraise to pay off others’ medical debt.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, a mere week after her passing, she has raised more than $600,000 towards this goal, which is enough to pay nearly $60 million in medical debt for cancer patients. The amount is still growing.
Her incredible thoughtful generosity has been covered by media everywhere, as her husband, Andrew Rose Gregory told the New York Times, “We’re overwhelmed, and it’s been really powerful to see the response to people wanting to eliminate strangers’ medical debt.”
According to the RIP Medical Debt, website collecting the funds, uses "data analytics to pinpoint the debt of those most in need: households that earn less than 4x the federal poverty level...or whose debts are 5% or more of annual income," then "buy debt in bundles, millions of dollars at a time at a fraction of the original cost," amounting to debt relief of about 100 times the amount raised by each campaign.
McIntyre’s original goal was to raise $20,000.
Here is the link, https://ripmedicaldebt.org/campaign/andrewrosegregory-47569/?