Landing at 5 am on a Red-Eye from Vegas (a 48 hour birthday fun trip for my mom), I headed home and debated, do I want to take a nap or catch up on LinkedIn? I got stuck on an incredible article and had to immediately start emailing people to talk about this. Later this very disgusting post-Vegas sleepy day my friends started flying in from different cities, first Arlington, then Jersey City, then Philly. I had no idea but my friends made a party for me all weekend where they flew to me and I cannot believe it. So at 2 am when we were just about ready to karaoke the last song, I looked at my calendar for my first call and realized it was 8 am. My first call had to be really important because I haven’t slept in a few days beyond my Frontier flight small tray 10 minute cat naps and I know it is going to be a great sleepless weekend so I looked and realized there is no way I am missing this call. I had the lovely opportunity to talk about the cost of healthcare and where I see audits missing the mark. I believe this is truly the only topic for which I would have set my alarm and I am so glad I did.
All my friends and family know that the cost of healthcare, patient financial literacy, and medical debt relief is what gets me up each day. Which is why I have no problem ridiculously and shamelessly asking for donations. Last week, I threw myself a virtual birthday party to raise money for the nonprofit that has become my obsession: Dollar For. This party was unique in that I asked everyone in the party to dial for dollars. We started with a video that made everyone a bit teary (this video shows $1M of medical debt crushed in 4 years, I am happy to report that $5M has been crushed to date). Then Jared Walker, Founder of Dollar For, made a cold call to show us how it is done. This master of telethon called a friend and had his friend donate $5 a month. As simple as that. He inspired us and then for the next hour and a half my friends and I dialed family, friends and posted on social media to ask for donations. I am so thankful and humbled to see how amazing my network of true friends are….we raised enough money to crush a minimum of $586,250 in medical debt.
Boom – my friends thank you thank you.
