Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton has been battling severe pneumonia in a hospital intensive care unit, daughters of the famed American gymnast said.
A Tuesday post on a crowd-funding page by Retton’s daughter, McKenna Kelley, characterized the Hall of Fame gymnast as being critically ill. Another daughter confirmed the illness to NBC News.
On the crowd-funding site, McKenna Kelley wrote: “My amazing mom, Mary Lou, has a very rare form of pneumonia and is fighting for her life. She is not able to breathe on her own. She’s been in the ICU for over a week now.”
Jesus H. Christ. This is Mary Lou Retton. She was possibly the biggest sports celebrity of the 80s. She wasn’t just an Olympian, she was on TV constantly. She was one of the first sports stars women could really look up to.
And she doesn’t have health insurance.
This is such a criminal travesty I don’t even know what else to say but poor Mary Lou. I hope she’s unconscious so if the worst happens, she won’t feel it.
American healthcare is in utter shambles when the family of an icon like Mary Lou has to gofundme for her care.
I hope she makes it through this. 🤞
I dunno if you’ve noticed, but America’s been in shambles a looong time. Education, Literacy, Healthcare, Economic mobility, Gini coefficient, life expectancy — almost every statistic related to standard of living and quality of life for the people (aka the working class) — fell well behind the rest of the developed world by the end of the 20th.
At this point it’s basically a failed state — just a bunch of corporate oligarchs in a trench-coat masquerading as a democracy — that’s halfway through the transition from oligarchy to fascist dictatorship, with both religion and conservatism leading the charge; as is tradition.
Except there is head nodding at working class people being “without”. Mary Lou Retton is a famous celebrity. The assumption is that fame equates to elite status with things the working class does not have. The shock is that even fame can’t get you health insurance.
@WhatAmLemmy It’s Cory’s enshitification applied large, and a lot of us have noticed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
You shouldn’t need health insurance. You should be able to get inpatient and outpatient care with tax payer funds and not walk away with a bill. As a country we should value the lives of the people living here more than we do.
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
There you go being logical again.
If only we valued people for their inherent worth. You can see what a society values by what it spends on. Follow the money. Sounds like as escalated conflict somewhere is brewing that might keep funneling resources to the oligarchs.
Wasn’t she on a Wheaties box? The first Female athlete on a Wheaties box, in fact? General Mills ought to pay back some of those cerealized profits. Heck, just republishing that box might raise enough money.
There’s a whole side issue about how screwed up our medical finance system is, but it’s not gonna get solved in time to pay that bill.
Or, hear me out, we wait until she dies, republish the box in memoriam, rake in the money, drop a couple of million into a donation saying we’ll help people with pneumonia and write off the taxes and claim some publicity! It’s win-win really!
Sir I’d like to offer you a position on our totally not evil board of trustees.
Exactly right.
You think we’d have a system where us Olympians could have the same kind of healthcare senators and Congressman get.
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