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When Danny Hoyland was diagnosed with stage III colorectal cancer in February 2025, the first stage of treatment for the 40-year-old father of two was immediate, aggressive chemotherapy followed by a summer marked by radiation therapy.

Hoyland had health insurance, but “the medical bills kicked in right away,” his mother, Barbara Todisco, told Medscape Medical News.

Hoyland’s deductible was $10,000, followed by a $9000 out-of-pocket maximum. If treatment spans more than a year, as Hoyland’s did, the plan resets.

Despite the aggressive treatment, Hoyland’s cancer progressed to stage IV. In October, his friend launched a GoFundMe campaign to ask Hoyland’s community to help offset the cost of his care. The goal was $50,000.

As cancer care becomes more expensive, patients and loved ones are turning to crowdfunding platforms to relieve some of the financial burden.

Cancer is among the most common conditions associated with medical crowdfunding. Hoyland’s GoFundMe is one of tens of thousands of cancer-related crowdfunding campaigns launched each year in the US. And despite raising an estimated $200-$250 million annually, these cancer-related campaigns only scratch the surface of the problem.

Most individual campaigns fall considerably short of their fundraising goals, and by the time patients turn to crowdfunding, many have already depleted savings and retirement accounts, and maxed out credit cards, said Jason Zheng, PhD, senior principal scientist of health services research at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, who has studied cancer-related crowdfunding.

On a broader scale, the growing reliance on crowdfunding campaigns to cover the costs of care signals a deeper problem in the medical system: “People are falling through the cracks,” said Veena Shankaran, MD, co-director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle. “Even people with good insurance are struggling.”

Big Costs, Too Little Coverage

Financial toxicity in oncology is a well-known issue.

A 2024 survey conducted by The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network found that half of the people who undergo cancer treatment accrue medical debt, despite 98% of people in the survey having health insurance. Almost 50% of those in debt owed more than $5000.

“The overarching problem is affordability in the US; 60% of people are living paycheck to paycheck,” said Zheng. “A cancer diagnosis is both a health shock and a financial shock.”

Treatment-related costs, which can come to more than $100,000 a year, represent the lion’s share of cancer care expenses. While health insurance is meant to shield patients from these costs, it often falls short, with millions of Americans considered underinsured due to high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.

Health insurance also does not help patients cover the many indirect costs of care. Arranging childcare, travel to treatment –– which can include airfare and hotel stays –– paying for meals at restaurants or hospital cafeterias, and missing work can plunge people with cancer into debt.

As medical and nonmedical expenses mount, patients and families are turning to crowdfunding for some relief. A 2025 study from Zheng and colleagues identified more than 78,000 cancer-related GoFundMe campaigns initiated between January 2021 and February 2023.

The reasons vary. A 2019 study, which analyzed 1035 GoFundMe campaigns for people undergoing cancer treatment, found that while the most common campaigns focused on helping pay medical bills (41%), about one quarter asked for help covering the costs of medical travel and 23% for other nonmedical bills. 

One of the biggest nonmedical financial burdens after a cancer diagnosis is time off work, especially for people who have multiple or low-paying jobs with little security, said Meredith Doherty, PhD, assistant professor at the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Hoyland and Todisco encountered many of these indirect expenses. With frequent long trips to the hospital, gas and parking garage fees added up quickly. When Hoyland spent 55 days in the hospital this winter, his mother was there nearly every day from morning until night.

With Hoyland on disability at almost half his previous income, “he still had to figure out rent and utilities and do what he could as far as the car maintenance,” Todisco said.

However, crowdfunding campaigns often don’t reach their financial goals. According to Zheng’s 2025 study, campaigns requested a median of $10,000 but that ranged anywhere from $1000 to $150,000. Overall, campaigns raised less than half of the requested amount — a median of $4000. Only 11.5% of campaigns met their goals within 90 days.

While $4000 may not seem like a lot, “for some families, a few thousand dollars can absolutely matter,” said Lauren Ghazal, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester School of Nursing, Rochester, New York, who studies cancer-related financial hardship. Still, the funds usually act as a “partial, patchwork solution,” Ghazal said. “For many families, it is nowhere near the full financial hardship of cancer.”

Even patients receiving financial assistance through grants often seek additional help via crowdfunding campaigns. In a 2022 survey of 113 younger cancer survivors with grants to help cover their care, about 40% also reported using medical crowdfunding.

“What was especially striking is that many were crowdfunding not because they were financially reckless or unprepared but instead because the financial demands of cancer exceeded what insurance, savings, and their support systems could absorb,” explained Ghazal, the lead author of the study.

Additionally, people often do not know when to turn to financial assistance, said Shankaran.

“Usually when people are looking for financial assistance for cancer care, it’s already too late. It’s a way to get out of a hole,” she said.

Potential Pitfalls

Despite the growing popularity of cancer-related crowdfunding campaigns, some people may be hesitant to launch a campaign because of the amount of information they need to make public, said Zheng.

“They have to disclose a lot of personal information, especially if they want to reach a broader community on the platforms,” said Zheng. “They have to share their name, their story and why they need financial assistance, maybe where they work, photos of the patients and their families.”

Ghazal’s 2022 survey asked young adult cancer survivors who used crowdfunding how they felt about it. 

“What we found was a real paradox,” Ghazal said. “Participants described crowdfunding as both helpful, even a ‘lifesaver,’ and also shameful, exposing, and unfair.”

People in the survey were also keenly aware that the success of a person’s crowdfunding effort was shaped not just by need but also by factors such as social networks, skill with technology, and proximity to people who were financially able to donate. 

Asking for financial help during a health crisis isn’t something new, said Doherty. What’s new is that technology has changed the way people do it.

“We used to get a lot of our mutual aid from those centers of human activity –– churches or community organizations,” she said. Online crowdfunding “is the replacement of that that leverages the new technology.”

There is another, less-discussed complication of medical crowdfunding: Accessing the funds after a patient passes away.

Throughout the winter, Hoyland’s condition declined. Tumor cells spread to his lungs and liver. On Tuesday, April 14, 2026, shortly after 5:00 PM, Hoyland died in the hospital. 

But the bills continued piling up. 

Todisco and her family were tasked with planning and paying for a funeral, which she estimated would cost at least $15,000. When she tried to access the nearly $24,000 raised through her son’s GoFundMe to help pay for funeral costs and additional medical bills, she couldn’t.

Todisco soon discovered a quirk to these campaigns — without being the beneficiary, families can’t access the funds when their loved one dies without first providing a death certificate or official obituary.

“You have to be the named person to get the funds, so I need to get the death certificate before accessing those funds,” said Todisco, who was eventually able to receive them.

Helping Families With Access

Stories like Hoyland’s illustrate why families turn to crowdfunding and how it falls short. 

These funds can help families weather a financial crisis, experts explained, but the money typically only covers a limited amount of what’s owed and rarely addresses the underlying issues that drove patients to seek financial help in the first place: The high costs of care.

Financial toxicity associated with cancer treatment is not a new problem, but it is receiving greater recognition, Shankaran said.

“Within most cancer clinics now, there is at least a social work team, if not a dedicated financial navigator, to find resources to pay for expensive drugs, which is vastly different than 5 years ago,” said Shankaran.

Still, medical systems need to do a better job of explaining how people can access resources outside of crowdfunding through patient advocacy groups, nonprofits or grants that can offer financial assistance. 

There are gaps. Not all facilities, particularly those who help low-income communities, have a team to help patients and families navigate financial resources and costs of care, Doherty noted, and patients may not know about discounts until it’s too late. 

Todisco agreed. She was paying the maximum $21/d for hospital parking until someone told her the hospital had a discounted rate of $7 for people whose family members were hospitalized long-term. People need to communicate with families about what is available, Todisco said. For patients, “if you don’t know to ask, you don’t get it.”

Doherty flagged several helpful resources. The Patient Advocate Foundation is a good place to start, she said. The nonprofit has caseworkers as well as co-pay relief and scholarship funds for patients who are enrolled in college. The American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge provides free accommodations for patients, and the American Cancer Society has funding available to help offset the cost of traveling to treatment. 

Dozens of other organizations also offer support to people living in specific states or who have been diagnosed with a specific type of cancer. Sense of Security, for instance, offers financial assistance to people undergoing breast cancer treatment.

Despite financial navigation programs and charitable assistance, many patients still struggle to find help before a crisis develops. Experts said the increasing reliance on crowdfunding is less a solution than a symptom of the high cost of cancer care and gaps in cancer care financing.

“When people need to publicly ask for money to access or sustain basic care, that is not a sign of a well-functioning healthcare system,” Ghazal said. “It signals that too much responsibility for financing cancer care has shifted from institutions onto individual patients, families, and their social networks.” 

The experts interviewed for this piece had no relevant disclosures.