Deer River man recovering from spinal injuries sustained in snowmobile crash
Jake Dunnell, 50, was involved in the incident in Deer River on Feb. 7. He suffered a broken leg and severe spine injuries, requiring surgery the next day. He was also intubated and placed on a ventilator.
Dunnell did not show signs of paralysis after the surgery, according to a GoFundMe created to support him during the recovery process.
Dunnell was transferred to a Duluth hospital for rehabilitation on Feb. 14, which was his 50th birthday.
'Any donations received are greatly appreciated and will be used for medical and living expenses, travel expenses and to help offset loss of income during his road to recovery,' the GoFundMe reads.
As of Thursday, the fundraiser had reached around $3,600 of its $5,000 goal.
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Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fed up with U.S. health care costs, these Americans moved abroad
Jennifer Sontag cracked her skull and couldn't afford emergency brain surgery. Her doctors suggested she start a GoFundMe. 'Their advice was, 'You've got to get the surgery. You'll work it out later,'' she said. 'And I'm like, 'Are you kidding me? Your advice to someone in a medical crisis is to beg for money?'' Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Sontag, 52, was teaching business management in China in 2019 when she fell while exiting a bus and hit her head so hard that it caused a leak of cerebral fluid in her brain. She spent five days in a hospital in Shanghai before her worried family persuaded her to get the necessary surgery close to them in St. Louis. Her hospital bill in China came out to roughly $1,300, she said. In Missouri, she negotiated the price of her operation down to about $100,000, resigning herself to a life of medical debt. Sontag, an entrepreneur who for years owned clothing boutiques in St. Louis and Kansas City, had moved to China largely because she had become fed up with the U.S. health care system. A decade before her fall, in the United States, she married her boyfriend 'purely to get health insurance,' she said, because she was already struggling to afford care for Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel condition. Within a year of getting married, she suffered a ruptured bowel, had emergency surgery and was saddled with some $20,000 in medical bills. She eventually filed for bankruptcy, unable to afford the costs as her illness stopped her from working. 'Even with his medical insurance, the co-pays and deductibles were so high that we still could not keep up,' she said. Years later, the couple divorced, and Sontag said she knew she had 'no other options' but to leave the United States. - - - 'The most expensive health care system in the world' Sontag is part of a small and largely unstudied group of Americans who have decided to leave the United States permanently because of their concerns over health care costs. They've instead chosen countries with socialized medicine, universal health care coverage or lower medical costs. 'For anybody who has a chronic illness, for people who are middle class, people maybe lower on the income scale, this might be a very, very strong motivation to move to a country that has a more comprehensive health care system that is also less expensive,' said Gerald F. Kominski, a professor emeritus at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. More than 30 countries have universal health care, according to a 2022 list from the New York state government, and many others offer some form of socialized medicine or government-subsidized care. 'It's widely known and has been in our field for decades that the United States is the most expensive health care system in the world, any way that you want to measure it,' Kominski said. In a system where most people pay into employer-provided health insurance plans, those who are self-employed like Sontag can suffer long gaps in medical coverage. Many are too young to qualify for Medicare and too well-off for Medicaid. And health insurance isn't a complete safety net, either. More than 40 percent of Americans are in some form of medical debt, according to the KFF, even though the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures show that about 92 percent of Americans were insured for all or part of 2023. Experts say the United States stands out from most other developed nations in that it has no stop-loss provision, or limit, on the amount of medical debt a family can be burdened with. 'Even among the best-insured in the employment sector, there are still individuals who, depending on the condition they have - depending on whether their company provides generous benefits or only high-deductible plans - can find themselves facing very large health expenditures,' Kominski said. Now, Sontag lives in the beachside city of Palermo, Italy, where she's still paying off her U.S. medical debt but can access tax-funded national health care with no out-of-pocket costs. She declared citizenship through her family heritage and started a concierge business that helps other Americans apply for citizenship or obtain visas. Roughly three-quarters of her clients cited health care costs as one of their primary motivations, she said. Business is booming, especially since President Donald Trump's election, she said, and she recently expanded her relocation services to Spain. Clients have cited their concerns over the future of Social Security, protections outlined in the Affordable Care Act and children's special-needs services. 'I live five minutes from the sea. I'm surrounded by the mountains, I can go to the doctor, I can eat good foods without pesticides - my Crohn's disease is very under-control now,' she said in a video call from a beachside terrace. 'But, you know, the resentment is always there. My mom has Alzheimer's. I can't be with her, and I'm afraid to go back to the U.S. because I don't have health coverage when I'm there.' - - - Lower costs, even without insurance Jason Kim, a 25-year-old crypto trader who grew up in Texas, was first confronted with a big medical bill when he was 19. Unaware of the cost of an ambulance ride, he called 911 and was taken to a hospital in New York City, where he was diagnosed with jock itch. The bill came out to about $50,000, he said. The next day, he signed up for Medicaid. The bill ended up getting covered, but the experience made him afraid to go to the doctor for years. It wasn't until he moved to South Korea - a place he hadn't lived since he was 13 - that he sought help for skin issues and an increasingly severe case of gastroesophageal reflux disease. He was easily able to afford an endoscopy and other treatments there, even before he received coverage under the government-subsidized national health insurance plan, which all residents are eligible for. He now lives in Seoul on a visa secured through his Korean heritage. 'I feel like health care in America is a kind of fraud,' he said. 'They overbill you, and when you speak to them and try to negotiate, they lower the bill.' Kim said he left the U.S. because he couldn't afford quality health insurance while self-employed, and because of the overall cost of living. 'I do miss America,' he said. 'I miss the bigger roads, the bigger personal space, the better air quality. … It's livable if you have the right coverage.' - - - Choosing between coverage and making a living Amy Willard, 61, survived cancer three times between 2009 and 2011: breast cancer twice and metastatic melanoma, a disease that had taken her mother's life. In Colorado Springs, she ran a small housecleaning business for about three decades, never making over $40,000 a year. She bounced in and out of health care coverage, often earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford the $600 to $800 in monthly insurance premiums she was quoted. 'If there's a crack, I always somehow manage to fall right into it,' she joked. At the peak of her health crisis, Willard had 11 cancer surgeries and was able to get Medicaid to cover them all. But she only qualified because she was too sick to work more than a few hours a week, causing her income to spiral. Once Willard was in remission and able to make more money, she lost her Medicaid coverage but couldn't afford private insurance plans, making follow-up care a financial burden. 'It was a lot of food stamps, a lot of social help, a few donations from friends. There were definitely some lean times, that's for sure,' she said. After the coronavirus pandemic devastated her cleaning business, she started thinking about an out. That's when she remembered her dreams as a preteen girl mesmerized by a French teacher 'who brought in croissants and spoke this beautiful language.' She started making plans to move to a village in southwest France. 'We get older, things start going on, and we need more regular health care,' she said. 'And I thought, 'I really can't afford to be here.'' She now lives in Saint Gaultier, about a four-hour drive southwest of Paris, on a renewable one-year visa that she hopes to roll into a more permanent status. She runs a small Etsy shop from her home along a small river, where she says she enjoys listening to the birds in the morning. Every time she visits the local clinic, she pays a flat fee of 25 euros (about $29), and all of her medications total about the same per month - a price so 'insanely reasonable' that she is okay living without comprehensive health coverage for now, she said. The French government requires those who apply for her visa to initially obtain a private plan that covers serious medical emergencies and disasters, so she has a policy that costs her about $350 a year. She applied to join France's national health care system last year. Then, this past June, Willard was suddenly hospitalized for nine days over anemia so severe that she needed four transfusions of blood, she said. She was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal tumor about the size of a grapefruit, and will need major abdominal surgery. French health care workers told her not to worry about the costs, saying her national health insurance card was being expedited. So far, she has not had to pay for her hospitalization or her two ambulance rides, and she says she regrets waiting so long to go to the hospital. Americans 'often must weigh the risk of financial ruin against how sick we feel,' Willard said. 'It's shameful that this is so deeply ingrained to us 'poorer' folk. I nearly died.' Related Content Ukraine scrambles to roll back Russian eastern advance as summit takes place Her dogs kept dying, and she got cancer. Then they tested her water. D.C.'s homeless begin to see the effects of Trump's crackdown Solve the daily Crossword
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
Fed up with U.S. health care costs, these Americans moved abroad
Jennifer Sontag cracked her skull and couldn't afford emergency brain surgery. Her doctors suggested she start a GoFundMe. 'Their advice was, 'You've got to get the surgery. You'll work it out later,'' she said. 'And I'm like, 'Are you kidding me? Your advice to someone in a medical crisis is to beg for money?''
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
ICE spared him from deportation to Venezuela. He donated a kidney to save his ailing brother in the Chicago area
The minutes dragged into hours on Wednesday night as Jose Gregorio Gonzalez tossed and turned through the night. At 5 a.m. the next day, he was scheduled to donate his kidney to his younger brother, Alfredo Pacheco, who was also restless. By 2 a.m. the two couldn't stay in bed any longer and began to get ready for a day that they thought would never come. ',' Gonzalez said. 'It's a miracle, because all odds were against us.' His mind raced back to the nights he spent locked inside an immigration detention center earlier this year, convinced he would soon be deported, while his younger brother pleaded with ICE officials to let him stay. Gonzalez was Pacheco's only hope to keep living after being diagnosed with terminal renal failure. When doctors told Pacheco he needed a kidney transplant, Pacheco stepped up. ',' Gonzalez said in Spanish. 'I didn't think about it twice.' But in March, just shy of a few weeks to begin the process for the transplant, Gonzalez was suddenly arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside their home in Cicero. Without him, Pacheco's condition would continue to deteriorate, putting him on an endless waiting list to get a transplant due to his immigration status. And doctors warned that time was running out. Gonzalez knew it: If he was deported, his brother would die. On Thursday, the brothers were admitted to the University of Illinois Hospital, where the transplant surgery was successfully performed. Hospital officials confirmed that both Pacheco and Gonzalez were recovering well. After mounting pressure from advocates and elected officials, ICE granted Gonzalez a temporary humanitarian parole so that they could proceed with the transplant, an unexpected move at a time when the agency is ramping up enforcement. Unlike in past administrations, immigration experts say agents today have less discretion over individual cases and are under pressure to meet deportation quotas, leaving little room for compassion. Though Gonzalez must return to Venezuela by March — after he's recovered from surgery — he says he's deeply grateful to the agent who, as he put it, 'touched his heart' and gave him the chance to save his brother's life. ',' Gonzalez said, smiling, his voice quiet and weak. 'Everything is possible if you have faith.' Even through the surgery, Gonzalez wore the ankle monitor that ICE activated when he was released from the Clay County Jail in southwest Indiana. The brothers now face a long and perhaps complicated road to recovery. The two have limited funds from the few hours of work that Pacheco was able to put in after dialysis over the last few months. Gonzalez was still waiting for the work permit that ICE officials promised. They were able to pay for rent and Pacheco's health insurance for a few months thanks to a fundraiser organized by his neighbors in the town of Cicero and a page on a GoFundMe page still open. But the money is running out quickly. Pacheco said he is worried the two won't be able to rest or take care of themselves properly after the surgery, potentially offsetting the success of the organ transplant and putting their lives on line once again. 'I have to be honest, we were so focused on making sure that I could get the transplant that we didn't consider much of the rest,' Pacheco said. 'We only have each other and cousins here. The rest of our family is in Venezuela.' Their cousin Cristalyn Gonzalez, 38, said her husband took some days off work to take care of their two kids so that she can help the brothers while they're at the hospital. 'I want them to feel supported somehow,' she said. 'We never thought that we would go through something like in the country we thought was going to provide us with opportunities to make a better life for us and our children.' Pacheco was the first one of the brothers to make his way in 2022. Like many other Venezuelan migrants, he made the trek to the United States hoping to get asylum from political and socioeconomic turmoil in Venezuela, where he served as part of the military during his youth. By January 2024, Pacheco was suddenly diagnosed with end-stage renal disease not long after arriving in the Chicago area from the southern border. 'My world completely fell apart,' Pacheco said, who at first refused to tell his family back in Venezuela. 'They were counting on me to help out over there.' Gonzalez was already at the southern border when he learned of his younger brother's brother's prognosis. Though agents had denied him entry the first time, he tried to enter again a second time, knowing that he would be his brother's lifeline. That's when Gonzalez was detained for the first time at a Texas facility awaiting deportation, but since there were no deportation flights to Venezuela, he was released to join Pacheco in Chicago under immigration supervision in March 2024. 'That was the first miracle,' Pacheco said. 'I know God was on our side.' Due to the previous order of removal, unlike Pacheco, Gonzalez cannot apply for asylum or any other kind of immigration relief. ICE officials had no comment, citing confidentiality rules. The oldest of six and having lost two younger siblings to accidents over the last few years in Venezuela, Gonzalez felt it was a blessing to be by Pacheco's side even if it was only for a few months to donate his kidney. Until ICE took him once again in March of 2025, just shy of a month of starting the process to donate the kidney — as confirmed by UIC hospital officials — and days before his parole ended. 'It has been a difficult, painful and frustrating experience,' Pacheco said. 'The American Dream doesn't exist. It's a lie. But at least there are good people in Chicago.' Despite his illness and uncertainty, getting dialysis every other day for four hours in the early morning, Pacheco worked delivering packages for Amazon. He used most of the money to pay for rent and food, and the rest, he said, he would send to his wife and children in Venezuela. 'They think everything is going OK here in Chicago, and that one day I will be back healthy and with enough money to start anew,' Pacheco said. Pacheco's children, a girl, 17, and twin boys, 9, still don't know that their father has a terminal illness. They also didn't know that we underwent lifesaving surgery on Thursday morning. They do know however, that their father and their uncle are hoping to return to Venezuela sometime soon, when 'things are much better,' he said. 'I now pray that my body responds well and that I have the strength to undergo the recovery,' Pacheco said. The recovery process is not an easy one, said Hilda Burgos, a longtime community activist who was key to the movement that helped to establish and pass legislation in Illinois in 2014 that expanded access to organ transplants, specifically kidney transplants, and the drugs needed to maintain the transplants, for immigrants with an irregular status in the country. 'Undocumented people, 'illegal people,' as many like to call us, were allowed to donate our organs to save people's lives including us citizen, but if we needed one, we couldn't get one. We couldn't even get in line to get one,' Burgos said. 'These two brothers are a testament to great work that the community has done to advocate for each other. We are not talking about policies here, it is people's lives.' Burgos' passion to advocate for those undocumented people in need of transplants began after her son was initially denied a kidney transplant he needed to continue living when he was 18-year-old in 2009. After mourning pressure, he got the surgery, but it was also then when she became aware of the 'unfair system.' Shortly after, she joined a delegation of faith leaders and medical leaders representing a group of ailing people in need of lifesaving transplants in Chicago. The group, led by the late Rev. Jose Landaverde performed hunger strikes outside the city's major hospitals, marched from Little Village to UIC and then to Northwestern. And they even conducted a funeral march for one woman who had died after not receiving a liver transplant. 'The fight for transplants was not an easy one,' Landaverde told the Tribune in 2014. While the 2014 law represented a significant step, its initial impact was limited due to several factors. In response, the Illinois Transplant Fund, a nonprofit organization, was established in 2015 to provide financial assistance, primarily covering health insurance premiums for eligible individuals, including undocumented immigrants, needing transplants and their aftercare. Over the last 10 years, ITF has supported hundreds of patients through the transplant process, including Pacheco. 'Senate Bill 741 was a simple, compassionate measure that has saved the lives of those many of us may never meet,' said Rep. Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero, 'It's in situations like Alfredo's and Jose's that we see the urgent need for our fiscal, health and education policy to not single out, but bring in, our neighbors without permanent legal status and those on society's margins.' Hernandez was one of the many elected officials leaders who rallied in support of the Venezuelan brothers, with more than 1,700 other people signing a petition requesting that ICE release Gonzalez. Most recently, in 2021, Illinois passed a new bill directing the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to cover post-transplant care for noncitizen kidney transplant recipients. A spokesperson for HFS said that despite the most recent changes, including the dismantling of coverage for noncitizen adults 42 to 65 years old, 'noncitizens who are not eligible for comprehensive medical benefits who have End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) may be eligible for certain dialysis, kidney transplantation, and post kidney transplantation services.' Immigration advocates say the brothers' case underscores the human cost of detention policies and the importance of considering humanitarian exceptions. 'We celebrate not just a successful surgery, but the triumph of love and community over fear and cruelty,' said Erendira Rendón, vice president of immigrant justice at the Resurrection Project, which provided Gonzalez with legal and community support for his release. 'The fact that this feels like such an incredible victory speaks to how cruel our immigration system has become. Across the country, families are being torn apart as parents, caregivers, coaches and partners are detained indiscriminately and jailed indefinitely in overcrowded facilities that put their mental and physical health at risk.' As the Venezuelan brothers recover side by side in a small hospital room, the physical pain is a reminder that their journey is far from over. Though the transplant was a hard-won victory, their lives remain defined by uncertainty, limited resources, fragile immigration status and the looming deadline for Gonzalez's return to Venezuela in March. And yet, for the first time in months, they can finally rest. ',' Pacheco said. 'We leave our life in God's hands.' Their pain, once rooted in fear and desperation, is now part of a story of survival made possible not by policy, they said, but by people. A community of strangers in the Chicago area rallied around them, Pacheco said, offering the kind of support they never expected to find in a foreign country.
