In early January, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized a policy to eliminate medical debt from credit reports. This decision is particularly important for individuals burdened by unexpected health-care costs and represents a pivotal shift in how Americans manage and finance their medical expenses.
But the Trump administration aims to diminish the CFPB. While the bureau’s shortcomings are certainly up for debate, the policy to remove health-care bills from credit reporting must be kept in place to protect patients from predatory billing practices. In a truly fair system, a hospital bill would reflect the actual cost of care, with a reasonable margin, not an arbitrary, inflated price designed to exploit people at their most vulnerable moments.
One of the most egregious failures of the American health-care system is the way it handles emergency medical situations. When someone experiences a medical crisis, a heart attack, a stroke, or a severe injury, they don’t have the luxury of choosing which hospital will treat them. Instead, they are transported by ambulance to the nearest or most convenient hospital, often with no say in the matter. In any other industry, consumers choose their providers based on price, quality, and personal preference. But in health care, patients are stripped of that basic right the moment they need urgent care.
Price gouging
Going to an emergency room and being charged an arbitrary amount is strikingly similar to price gouging during a natural disaster. They both exploit people in situations where they have no real choice. When a hurricane, wildfire, or other disaster strikes, people often scramble to evacuate, needing essential supplies like gas, food, and lodging. Take the hoarded personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. In one case, a company was found guilty of purchasing 250,000 KN95s—filtering facepiece respirators—from a foreign manufacturer and selling 100,000 of them to New Jersey grocers for a 400% markup. The National Library of Medicine found that factors like price gouging, demand shock, and disrupted supply chains contributed to “significantly elevated” PPE costs for national hospitals through the first wave of the pandemic. Examples like this illustrate why price-gouging is illegal in many states. The logic behind banning it is simple: When people are in crisis, they shouldn’t be exploited for basic needs.
Hospitals do essentially the same thing with emergency care. When someone experiences a life-threatening event, they don’t have time to compare prices or shop around for the best hospital. They are taken to the nearest facility, treated without being told the cost, and later hit with an outrageous bill that has no correlation to the actual cost of providing care.
The key similarity is coercion under duress. In both cases, people are not making free-market decisions; they are making life-or-death decisions with no ability to negotiate or walk away. Just as a gas station in a disaster zone is not operating in a fair market when it triples its prices, hospitals are not operating in a fair market when they bill patients thousands of dollars for care they never agreed to at a set price.
Health-care reform
If price gouging is unacceptable in the wake of a hurricane, why is it tolerated in health care, where the stakes are just as high? The reality is that hospitals are engaging in a legalized form of extortion, exploiting the lack of alternatives in emergencies to maximize profits at the expense of patients. It’s a broken system that prioritizes financial gain over fairness and transparency, and it needs serious reform.
Hospitals justify their arbitrary pricing by citing administrative complexity, uncompensated care, and the burden of uninsured patients. But these are just excuses for a system that lacks transparency and accountability. Unlike a free market, where businesses compete for customers by offering fair prices and quality services, emergency health care operates as a monopoly. The patient has no bargaining power, no knowledge of the price beforehand, and no way to opt out of the service.
Additionally, medical debt is a flawed indicator of creditworthiness. Unlike consumer debt—such as credit card balances or personal loans—medical debt is often incurred unexpectedly due to emergencies, illnesses, or accidents. According to data compiled by the Commonwealth Fund, 72% of medical debt stems from acute care situations like hospital stays or accident treatments—or in other words, unexpected emergencies. Individuals rarely choose to take on medical debt in the same way they might choose to finance a car or make purchases on credit. Yet, for years, unpaid medical bills have unfairly damaged credit scores, limiting access to mortgages, auto loans, and even employment opportunities.
Penalizing people for medical debt exacerbates the financial instability that the traditional health-care system already creates, functioning as a form of entrapment by forcing individuals into a cycle of financial hardship that benefits hospitals, insurance companies, and collections agencies while punishing patients. Many traditional insurance models leave individuals with unexpected out-of-pocket costs, high deductibles, and confusing billing practices, leading to debt accumulation. This debt, when reported to credit agencies, makes it even harder for individuals to recover financially.
The CFPB’s policy ensures that people are not punished for their health-related expenses, allowing them to focus on recovery rather than financial ruin. While the bureau’s future remains to be decided, this policy must be kept in place to reduce the long-term consequences of an already predatory system and allow people to rebuild their financial standing more fairly. Until this system changes, Americans will remain trapped in a cycle of medical debt, forced to pay whatever price hospitals decide after the fact. And that isn’t just unfair, it’s extortion.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
I was laid off, but then I won $10 million in MrBeast’s game show—here’s what Jeff Allen plans to do with his new fortune and ‘daunting’ millionaire status
Ever wondered what it’d be like to win millions in a MrBeast competition? Jeff Allen did exactly that. He reveals exclusively to Fortune what it’s like winning $10 million—the largest prize fund ever awarded for a competitive reality TV show—how he’s investing the cash, and why he’s not going to let it put a pin in his career.
When MrBeast—whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson—put out a calling last year for 1,000 contestants for a new reality competition show, Jeff Allen was skeptical. Allen had just lost his job, and he was dealing with the realities of having a son with a rare brain disease. But, he decided to take a leap of faith and made it on the show as contestant number 831.
After weeks of filming that took him to Las Vegas, Panama, and Toronto, he was crowned victory and left $10 million richer, the largest sum ever awarded in a competitive reality TV show—but the adjustment hasn’t been as easy as he expected.
“It’s a blessing to win $10 million and have 10 million eyes from all over the world on you and hear about my son’s rare brain disease,” Allen tells Fortune. “But also it’s a little daunting.”
While during Beast Games, Allen had to deal with pulling a monster truck, finding a golden ticket, and opening mystery briefcases, he’s now fighting new challenges—like figuring out what to do with his newfound millionaire status and how to stretch it as far as possible to find a cure for his son’s disease.
In it for the platform—not the money
Allen’s youngest son, Lucas, was born with a rare genetic disorder called creatine transporter deficiency (CTD), which has caused a deficit in his brain development. According to the Association for Creatine Deficiencies (ACD), an estimated 35,000 individuals have the condition. Allen has made it his life’s mission to bring awareness to CTD—and one day help find a cure for it.
That’s why during the countless times Allen had the opportunity to take one of the game’s bribes—even $1 million—to leave the game, he stayed. During each episode of Beast Games, a portion of the original 1,000 contestants were eliminated or left with a bribe, with only six remaining by the 10th and final part.
However, Allen says he was never in it for the money. By episode eight, Allen was spotlighted, and he shared Lucas’s story with the world. By episode 10, it was hard to not root for Allen, knowing what he hoped to do with the money.
“My ultimate aim for joining Beast Games was to have a platform to talk about my son—Lucas’s rare brain disease,” he tells Fortune, adding that it wasn’t until episode 10 that he realized he could even take home the life-changing amount of cash.
“I realized, wait, I’m this far, I can also win this thing,” he says. “I got the best of both worlds, and it’s crazy to even think back to it.”
In total, Beast Games won 44 Guinness World Records while recording, including the largest physical cash prize on set.
After recording for the show wrapped up in the fall, Allen and his family had to stay quiet about his victory, but it didn’t stop him from raising awareness for CTD. He recently spent 18 days rucking across California. He hiked 365 miles in total, with weights on his back, and raised over $140,000 for the ACD. As a volunteer board member of the organization, he hopes the whole world will soon know about the disease.
“Our aim as parent advocates is to find solutions for our kiddos and to help families who aren’t even who aren’t even formed yet, to be able to avoid struggling and suffering the way our families do today,” he says.
Heidi Wallis, executive director of the ACD, says Allen has “jolted” the organization’s parent-powered movement. During the week of the Beast Games finale, the ACD website experienced 100 times the usual traffic. Weeks later, website visits are still 10 times higher than usual.
“Together, we are creating a future where every child with CTD can be diagnosed promptly and treated effectively. Thanks to this elevated awareness, more families have found support — and hope for a cure,” Wallis says.
Allen hopes to raise $40 to $50 million for the organization to hopefully fund a clinical trial and find a cure.
So, what do you do with a cool $10 million?
At the start of Beast Games, the grand prize was only set to be $5 million, but a plot twist in the final episode caused the pot to double to $10 million. Allen says that only after the show was released was he wired the money.
Immediately, Allen moved a majority of his money into a high-yield U.S. treasuries cash reserve, and his financial advisor at Arta Finance, Emmy Sakulrompochai, helped him set up an estate plan that included a special needs trust to ensure his son has long-term financial support.
Allen also donated $200,000 to charity to help fund research for CTD, with plans to make a larger donation later this year.
“His goals are pretty clear, that he wants to stand up all his money,” Sakulrompochai tells Fortune. “He wants to be able to grow and invest that over time so that he could create impact as much as possible within the research.”
She adds that for anyone who encounters a new large sum of money, it’s critical to think about long-term goals before spending it. Otherwise, you might run into major tax issues later or simply end up losing it all like some lottery winners. Allen may owe the government $2.5 million due to income taxes, but by investing the money in the meantime, he may be able to lessen the burden.
And despite the challenges that come with being a millionaire and internet sensation, Allen says he isn’t going to let it all put a permanent damper on his career.
“I do have an appetite for business,” Allen says. “I love the sales and operations side of it. Right now, I haven’t dove back into anything quickly, but it’ll be hard to keep me away for a long time.”
“At the end of the day, it’s good problems to have,” he adds. “Overall, I’m happy and I’m blessed.
The race for more data is dominating the wellness industry. More people are tracking their sleep, monitoring their glucose levels, and analyzing their step count as a way to optimize, or even gamify, their health. Now, even more data is available to assess how your genetics match up with your partner.
Last week, the five-year-old startup Nucleus Genomics launched a genetic matching feature— “multiplayer mode”—so future parents can assess how their DNA aligns, and their combined risk for passing on a range of conditions.
“We look at a couple’s DNA, and we calculate their risk of passing down over 900 different conditions to their children,” 25-year-old founder and CEO Kian Sadeghi tells Fortune in an exclusive interview about the announcement. “We really believe in building tools that let people have agency over their health and over that of their family as well. We’re really uncovering these sort of invisible risks.”
The company, which has a team of genetic experts on staff, was founded by Sadeghi who dropped out of college to launch the startup in honor of his cousin who, as a teenager, died in her sleep from a genetic condition she didn’t know she had.
“Most physician-ordered genetic tests stop at conditions where there’s a family history, or that are more prevalent,” Sadeghi says. “These miss critical variants that parents could pass down to their children because parents or doctors have to choose what they want to see, at a stage when you usually don’t know what to look for.”
With the new partner matching test, Sadeghi isn’t insinuating that he is breaking up couples if their genetics don’t perfectly align. “As a parent, you really should have the choice and information ahead of time. Decide what you want to do, because to me, it’s all about individual liberty. It’s all about choice. It’s up to the couple,” he says, adding that with more information, couples may make other reproductive decisions. “That’s what we’re really all about. We’re about enabling and empowering families with information. We’re not about circumventing or stopping families.”
The company, which raised $14 million in series A funding this year, is an “outlier” in the field, says Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical who is not associated with the company. Gusev views Nucleus as an offering that does genetic predictions, like 23AndMe, and includes rare disease screenings (usually a company offers one or the other). “What 23andMe was doing was sequencing a sample of the genome, which included some known, rare variant disease mutations, but not all of them,” he says. “Whereas a whole genome platform gets you every single mutation that an individual carries. The genomic data is the superset of everything you can use, and it’s now not that expensive anymore.”
However, while “rare disease screening is of real clinical importance,” Gusev says partner matching and prediction tests are not.
“Most people are screening whether they themselves [are at risk] because they can go and do something about it,” he tells Fortune. “This idea of partner screening before even having kids is relatively new and is not a use that has been offered. We are many steps away from where this is real and actionable.”
Gusev adds that it’s not clear whether a future child could inherit the gene they are predisposed to and, if they did at some time years down the road, there could be new treatments that improve someone’s outcomes. “The further you move the measurement away from the reality, from when it actually is an individual, the more complexities creep into that decision and can modify the eventual outcome,” he says.
Nucleus does not predict phenotypes (observable traits), but does include IQ predictions in their list of conditions tested, which Gusev says is more concerning. “It echoes concerns about eugenics. Screening going beyond disease to screen for the type of person, the type of child you want from a personality perspective can have serious ramifications for our society,” he says.
The company’s site says that “researchers are still in the early stages of understanding how genetics impacts IQ.” While Sadeghi says the technology used will only get more robust, he adds, “We don’t currently provide predictions for future babies on anything outside of hereditary disease.”
“Preconception testing is pretty standard of care … we stand for using technology to empower couples,” Sadeghi tells Fortune when asked about the concern of eugenics. “It has nothing to do with eugenics … When the public understands genetic medicine as a proxy for eugenics, everyone loses.”
Despite Sadeghi saying phenotype reporting is not part of the process, TechCrunch reported that Neurolink Genomics investor and Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov shared that there could be “phenotype reporting” in the future as more people use the model and it gets more accurate.
When asked by the TechCrunch reporter if phenotype matching was a function of modern day eugenics, Asparouhov made a joke, “miming the same hand motion that Elon Musk performed following President Trump’s inauguration” and said “My heart goes out to you.”
When Fortune asked Sadeghi about Asparouhov’s comments and gesture, he said “I personally wasn’t in and cannot comment on what was said or alluded to. Regardless, we do not agree with any comments likening genetic tests to eugenics or any of its implications … We stand for expanding access to technology and information, and in turn, empowering people to make their own decisions about their own health and that of their family.”
Nucleus’ general offering includes an individual swab test for $399 and claims to give users genetic risk assessments on over 900 conditions, including cancer, heart disease, cognition, and focus. For example, your age and genetic information may indicate your risk for a heart condition is higher than average. In addition to the cost of the test, members can pay an additional $99 fee for hour sessions with a genetic counselor.
As genetic testing becomes more popular and companies like 23andMe have come under fire for data privacy violations, Sadeghi also says his customer’s health data isn’t shared with third parties and that the company is HIPPA compliant with all samples analyzed in a U.S. laboratory.
“It’s like going to your doctor’s office,” he says.
CEO of $13 million facial chain Glowbar says there’s one thing entrepreneurs aren’t told before launching businesses—she learned it the hard way during the pandemic
Rachel Liverman, the co-founder and CEO of $13 million facial chain Glowbar, says there’s a tough lesson most entrepreneurs don’t learn until they’re in the trenches. However, she took a stressful moment and turned it into a huge business opportunity.
A well-thought-out business strategy may seem essential for success—but in many cases, entrepreneurs may as well rip it up, because the future has a mind of its own. That’s at least, what Rachel Liverman, CEO and co-founder of the $13 million facial chain Glowbar, experienced.
“You can have a plan, but the universe laughs,” Liverman tells Fortune, adding that it’s the one warning seasoned founders don’t tell you.
Glowbar may be one of the most popular facial chains in America, with 18 locations across the East Coast, and five new stores set to open this year. Between 2023 and 2024, membership grew 100%, and Glowbar’s studio footprint doubled. Over the last six years, the facial chain has delivered over half a million facials and is one of the fastest-growing facial studios in the U.S. In 2023 Glowbar received $10 million in Series A funding, alongside $3 million raised earlier in family and family investments.
But the road to success is often a bumpy one—and entrepreneurs are better off buckling up. Liverman started the business in 2019, and soon after fundraising and tricking out a Glowbar location in Tribeca, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“The pandemic was wild…I had the business plan, I had all the docs, I got all my investors. I had this whole plan, and then: Coronavirus,” Liverman says. “It was my first beautiful test of entrepreneurship.”
Due to New York’s pandemic mandates, Liverman had to shut Glowbar’s doors for over six months, furloughing staffers at the store until the state’s rules allowed for operations to continue. She even had to start a GoFundMe to ensure all her employees were taken care of.
However, Liverman found a way to turn sour lemons into lemonade—and came out of the pandemic even stronger.
Finding business success when the universe laughs
Many people were safeguarding their wealth during the uncertainty of the pandemic, leading to a $2.1 trillion swell in savings from March 2020 to August 2021. Instead, Liverman saw it as an opportunity to splurge. With only one store finished—the Tribeca location, which had subsequently closed—and another still in development, she saw a chance to expand prematurely.
“It was certainly a test, and I was very lucky I was small enough to weather that storm,” Liverman says, adding that she soon took notice that landlords were slashing rent prices as they struggled to fill empty storefronts during the pandemic.
“So I optimized for that time in real estate and signed probably four or five leases during 2020 and 2021—and got amazing deals. It’s one of the reasons why we have a location on Fifth Avenue and 16th Street, because it was the COVID deals.”
Liverman’s bold decision to expand during uncertain times paid off: the Fifth Avenue location now serves as Glowbar’s headquarters. “Today, I wouldn’t be able to afford that,” she adds.
When the chips are down or business isn’t taking off, Liverman has one recommendation for entrepreneurs: lean on others. They may even have the answer to your problem. But at the very least, they will provide support.
“It’s a simple thing, and as an entrepreneur, when you grasp it, it will unlock so much: asking for help,” Liverman says. “Not feeling like you need to pretend to know it all or have it all figured out. Just really vulnerable… If the founder, entrepreneur, or CEO knew everything, they wouldn’t have needed to hire a team.”
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