The tourists in Asia who crowdfund to pay crippling medical bills
- About 40 per cent of under-35s who travelled overseas were uninsured, a 2017 British survey found; fewer than half of American travellers take out insurance
- Travellers who have a health emergency and aren’t insured or covered turn to sites such as GoFundMe to pay for care, and sometimes repatriation
Michael Lythcott had just been pulled out of a ravine with a cracked skull, collapsed lungs, several fractured ribs and a lacerated liver when the medical staff attending him at a village hospital in Ubud, Bali asked him a simple question: “Do you have insurance?”
Through a haze of pain, Lythcott’s mind flashed back to the previous night when he had remembered he needed to update to his travel insurance policy, and let the insurance company know he had left Europe for Asia.
It was late, and the restaurant would soon be closing, so he put it off. Instead, he hopped on a rented motorbike with his travel companion, fellow American Stacey Eno, and headed into town.
Lythcott and Eno never made it back to their hotel that night, in August last year. On their way home, a minor earthquake pitched them off their bike and down a deep ravine. Lythcott suffered internal injury, while Eno broke a wrist and several bones, including her jaw.
Their rescue a few hours later may have saved their lives, but their accident – an emergency overseas requiring unexpected, steep medical fees – put Lythcott, 39, a globetrotting web developer, and Eno, 26, a schoolteacher in South Korea, in a bind. It’s a situation that is becoming increasingly common as more young people spend months at a time travelling and living overseas, or have adjusted their professional routines to become digital nomads.
Faced with what would eventually amount to about US$70,000 in medical fees between them, Lythcott and Eno turned to a solution that is also becoming increasingly common as travellers encounter emergencies without insurance, or find their specific accidents uncovered by their insurer: they crowdfunded.