This is a very busy forum. Just passing this along.

Sarah Hamilton, April Ryan,The Longest Journey and Dreamfall  and Chapters,needs a hand. Just passing it along, follow link to help her out.
http://www.gofundme.com/8fbxk8
Even if you don't know who she is, what she does. She is a real survivor. She is really a truly beautiful, strong and boldly courageous human being. If you can even offer 5 dollars you are showing your support in her incredibly difficult and inspiring journey. I admire her profoundly. Just read her story, it's so inspiring and heart breaking at the same time. I donated what I could.

"What's my opportunity here?' is a question I never cease asking myself. I am a woman who doesn't allow life's challenges to get in the way of my growth. In fact, I believe challenges are to be overcome in order to transform our lives and allow us all to find the joy that is our birthright. And I have been challenged in the last decade.

My belief was put to the test when I was diagnosed in 2002 with Multiple Sclerosis, then 18 months later with Stage 2 Parotid (Salivary) Gland Cancer. 'What's my opportunity here?' was the question that kept repeating itself. My back was subsequently operated on due to a completely extruded disc in 2010. In 2013 I slipped and fell on the ice and needed surgery in my hand due to a ruptured tendon. Also one of the main MS symptoms are many many migraines. At one point they were up to 25 a month. Thankfully they are now down to about 10. All of this ... has led to bills, some of which I am still paying off without rancor.

Now again my belief has been put to the test. On April 2nd I went back to the Hospital for back surgery again. This time needing a fusion of my spine. I spent 4 days in the hospital post surgery due to drainage tubes, IV's and pain management that could not be medically supervised at home. I am now home and bills are coming in, which doesn't allow for ease of healing due to stress. The stress of which has caused an MS relapse which has come in the form of severe vertigo. This doesn't make movement easy, which is crucial to my healing. One doesn't want to topple over after a back fusion, that's not such a good idea...

So what is my opportunity here? It's to acknowledge that I need help. Help with my bills. Once I am given the go ahead to go back to work it will be part time, and in conjunction with all my regular bills I won't be able to pay my previous doctors bills let alone my new ones. I also acknowledge how so very grateful I am for being allowed the time to get well and for having those around me who love me. Yet I need help. And if you are able to do so I would be so grateful to all of you for the rest of my healthy life. So.... Thank You, Thank You from the bottom of my heart. I am honored and humbled by your support.

With All My Love,
~Sarah "

This again?

I'm not sure how many people would be interested in helping after that last time when somebody scammed folks for money for gender reassignment or whatever it really was, I don't think we ever did find out the truth there. I felt sorry for the devs that were helping her out.

Also, this isn't the first time this information has been posted here.

OP why are you posting this again?

I'd be happy to help her out; after some digging, I'm only finding things that seem to support this as being legit. Tempted to send her an email to be 100% sure, but I doubt that's really nessecary. I hope she gets better.

I remember a couple of years ago I had to PAY to have my wisdom teeth removed at a private hospital, just because for some stupid reason dental isn't covered by Medicare, it cost me OVER A THOUSAND DOLLARS because I had to be put under for a few hours and it required a proper surgeon because my impacted horizontally growing wisdom teeth were dangerously close to my nerve running along my jaw.

I sure didn't go complaining on GOG for money though.

I doubt this is an outright scam, but something about this is not right. For one thing she mentions April of this year going in for surgery, but there's no explanation as to why she doesn't have health insurance. As of the beginning of the year, anybody can sign up for health insurance and the companies have to cover you for anything you have, provided that it's covered.

Also, hospitals always provide payment plans for folks that don't have insurance and often times agree to write offs for a lot of it as well. Which seems to me to be similar to going around begging strangers for help paying for the care.

So, this probably isn't a scam, but something about this probably isn't as it appears.

People should do their research and make their own minds up, the campaign page just leaves a lot of things unanswered that should be trivial to answer. And some people do go to crazy lengths for attention and money. One of my mother's student's saved all the hair off her head and pretended to be seriously ill with some form of cancer. She was eventually busted for fraud and as far as I know was sent to prison, but nobody would have suspected it. It wasn't until well into it when she said too many different things to too man different people that it fell apart. TBH, something about this doesn't smell right to me. A year or two ago, I wouldn't have questioned why somebody like Sarah doesn't have healht insurance, but to have a health history like that and not have insurance in 2014 is something that does require some explanation. The insurance companies are required to take everybody and pretty much anybody who can't afford coverage gets coverage through medicaid, and this type of surgery probably would be covered under that.

I'm not saying this is a scam, but it does seem very strange to me that there's no explanation as to why she doesn't have an insurance policy to pick up the tab here.

Hm. There could be some sort of circumstance we're unaware of; I'm not a US Citizen, so I know very little about your health care system and how it works, so I wouldn't really know what such a situation could be. The Dreamfall facebook promoted this, so upon seeing that I assumed it was indeed legit. I'm going off that and the fact that anyone who is or is pretending to be someone involved in the games industry pulling a scam would get so much attention when it's revealed, they'd be sued into the ground, so who would bother trying?

Most of the bills have been for procedures between 2002 and 2013 - what her post says. The funding goal is 24,000, which is believable even with insurance for years of big bills for surgeries, MS, etc.

All insurance policies, even the new ones made available by the gov't have deductibles and copays and coverage limits. So, several years running of, say, a $3000 deductible plus, let's guess, 20% of the remaining bills? A balance of $24,000 is totally believable.

Insurance doesn't mean you are free and clear. It's just the difference between owing $24000 after a decade of procedures and owing half a million dollars.

Cheers.

I think it's always a good idea to "raise people's awareness" to some charity's work in some specific areas (bringing food here, digging wells there, taking care of ill people over there ....).
On the other hand, just asking random people for money for something specific can be very damaging, because scam is common practice.

I had the same, but fortunately I got them removed (surgically from the lower jaw) in public hospital, didn't have to go to private. Yeah, I'm all for public health care, people shouldn't be denied treatment just because they are poor. Different thing of course if one wants bigger silicone tits or something.

Well yeah, but in Australia we do have public health care, I just found it annoying that the one time I needed the system it couldn't help me because for some reason Medicare covers everything except inside your mouth. I had to have all four wisdom teeth out, top and bottom jaw I have to say before I had them taken out they were extremely painful.

Am I the only one sick of this kind of self pity, give your money to charity crap?

"You will be visited by three ghosts this evening..."

Nah, I get why you're sick of it, but if you're in trouble and can't afford to have something done but it needs to be done, it's good that disadvantaged people can turn to places like this. No-one I know has a spare $24 k just laying about. It's awesome that total strangers can be kind, and choose whether or not to help you out...though I defiantly understand the wearyness of it being a scam or not.

No, but if she couldn't afford to pay them, that's what charity care is for. I'm not sure why she's passing the hat around for bills that should have been negotiated down or written off by the hospital.

I'm not really sure why asking for donations from people with no knowledge of the actual bills is any better than just having the hospital take the write off like they're suppose to in situations like this. Right, that's the main reason why I bothered posting. For people outside the US they aren't likely to know that hospitals pretty much always negotiate the cost down on procedures or offer payment plans, assuming that they don't have to just write it off completely as charity care. The bills they send are much higher than the cost of service and are usually designed to be high enough that they'll max out whatever the insurance company is willing to pay.

Insurance companies vary in how much they pay for certain parts of a procedure and will never offer more than you ask for, so the price of each item in the inventory is always much higher than the real cost is. So, you can usually negotiate it down quite a bit just by telling them you have no insurance and asking for a more affordable plan.

That's one of the reasons why health insurance is so expensive in the US.

I'm not saying that this isn't legitimate or that she isn't using the money to pay for the medical bills she says she has, but it is suspicious that she's willing to ask people to donate to pay for bills that she could have had written off by the doctors and hospital, or at least negotiated down to a significant extent.

There's also bankruptcy as an option as well. It screws up your credit score for years, but this is the most common situation under which an individual will file for bankruptcy protection.

In all these ways of dealing with it she's having other people pay the bills, I'm not really sure why having strangers who might not know how the system works pay is a better option than the other ones she has. Indeed, whether or not she's scamming people, there are a lot of important answers that don't appear on her fund raising page. Some folks here were bitten by that last time when somebody was looking for funds for what turned out to be related to gender reassignment rather than the car accident that she was claiming.

Unfortunately, too many people give money based upon emotion, so people who really need it get screwed over by scammers that are taking advantage of people's good intentions.

All I meant to accomplish with my post is to point out that the costs she states are plausible. That's the first thing to think through when approached in this way. You seemed to think that the bills weren't plausible. I was offering my two cents.

More info: if you have zero insurance, hospitals will negotiate reduced bills, payment plans, discounts for cash, etc. However, if you do have insurance, the hospitals can and do refuse any additional negotiation, since they've already negotiated bills down with the insurance company. And, like I said above, a very common scenario after insurance is for an individual to be left with $3000/yr deductible plus 20% of any bills above that. That can add up.

You mention charity and bankruptcy. Fair enough.

Charity: I'll point out that a public appeal over a donation site is one avenue for seeking charity in such situations. There are many charities out there. None of them is guarenteed to help you for the full amount you need, or even to help you at all. People in need often pursue multiple avenues simultaneously. And I've never met anyone who came out ahead by doing it that way. The best I've ever seen is charity, both institutional and personal bringing costs down under control.

Bankruptcy: The laws covering this change sometimes yearly. But it is not now the free pass people think it is. You correctly point out that it screws your credit. It may also not actually absolve you of the medical debts. It is complicated and risky enough to not be entered upon lightly. And $24,000 is not enough to warrant it.

All that being said: of course, you are under no obligation to help. It's an appeal. By my estimation it is on the up and up, even if not every question is addressed in the appeal, even if the style of appeal is not to your liking.

I don't judge you for not wanting to give. But I think some of your concerns are misplaced in this case. It seems to me that the appeal is aimed at gamers, because her video game voice work is so well-loved. If you ever do find yourself in a spot where you feel like making a public appeal to strangers is in your best interest, you would of course be well advised to find an angle that will help potential givers make a connection with you.

tl;dr I think your concerns are good in general but misplaced in this particular case. You are of course under no obligation to give.

Cheers.