Metro News: Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton, a West Virginia native, is fighting for her life in an intensive care unit, according to a social media post by her daughter.
McKenna Kelley, Retton’s 26-year-old daughter, wrote in an Instagram story and an accompanying fundraising post that “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. Out of respect for her and her privacy, I will not disclose all details. However, I will disclose that she not insured.” more here
No insurance? How does she not have any health insurance?
maybe because insurance cost is ridiculous
Insurance cost is ridiculous because healthcare cost is ridiculous. Also 0bama let insurance lobbyists write the “Affordable Care Act”. Average family will save $2500/yr.
GEEZUS, ONLY IN AMERICA IS IT BETTER TO BE AN ILLEGAL
There is a commercial that has just started to air on regular TV featuring Mary Lou. Hope she fights her way back and recovers.
Lifting up prayers for a sweet little gymnast! Lord help her and her family. Hold them in your mighty arms. In Jesus’s name I pray.
I just saw her in a commercial for insurance!
A lot of people don’t have insurance. It’s called the working poor.
They make too much to get welfare and don’t have the skills or the connections to easily move up.
They’re not on the government teat and the system makes them struggle.
My folks both hail from Faimont WVA, raised there, went to WVU together, fell in love there, and only left when my Pa came back from the Air Force so they could get jobs and raise a family together. There just isn’t a lot of work there for folks who trained as accountants and not coal miners.
In ’84 I wasn’t long out of school. I was busy finding out I wasn’t going to get rich as a car mechanic and that my guitar skillz were only good for repelling cats, so I wasn’t tuned into the sports world. But still, even a lunk like me couldn’t help but notice how this little pixie entranced a nation, and how thrilled and proud my folks were that she unabashedly repped not only for the USA but also for their old stomping grounds. Sometimes folks seemed to laugh at Appalachian heritage, and some folks seemed embarrassed about it, but little Mary Lou never was, and my folks really seemed to appreciate that.
That was back when Olympic athletes actually seemed to appreciate their opportunity and work HARD to be worthy of it.
Mary Lou certainly did.
And I can’t even imagine a universe that she would have insulted the very colors she was wearing, as seems to be so trendy today.
I know nothing of her, her family, her post-Olympic life, but I do know if she went back to WVA life would still have been hard, gold medal or no. Perhaps hard enough to explain the insurance thing. And she’s actually a bit younger than me, so no Medicare just yet. Such is life.
My mind says she’s a dead woman. Rare pneumonia, l9ng term ICU ventilation, not a deep well of income for modern doctors to try to dip into, probably the only reason they kept her alive THIS long if ’cause she’s famous. Logically, I’d expect her to catch a wandering nosocomial infection and die of a fever, if she doesn’t drown in her own fluids first.
But where there’s life, there’s hope, and that’s to hope on the Ultimate Physican, the Lord.
Dear Lord, we come before You today in praise and thanksgiving for this giving rise to this amazing lady, equipping her with the skills to inspire a nation and the humility to not put herself before You. We know that You have numbered her days as with all Your creation that we ask that You make Your sign upon her, that You guide the minds and hands of her healers, that You give her a miraculous recovery that she may again inspire a nation, but this time inspire us to Your Glory. If it is in Your Will to call her home Lord, please comfort her family that this is the way You chose to heal her, to be with You forever in an incorruptible body and that all may be reunited at Your feet by and by.
I am worthy to ask nothing of You Lord as no man is, but by the blood of Your Son. By that Blood and on His infinite mercy I pray for this healing, be it physical or eternal, as always Thy will be done.
in the precious name of Jesus I pray,
Amen.
God Bless,
SNS
Hope to hell she didn’t get the new pneumonia vaccine (mRNA Enhanced)
No insurance? Does she own a home? Take a loan out against the home. She’s old enough to get a reverse mortgage to get cash to pay the hospital bill. Sure insurance is expensive, so is the ending bill. Goes along with fire victims not insuring their home or being under-insured. Something doesn’t sound right here.
Vaxed, I Bet
She has plenty of money, a 9,000 square foot home in Houston. If she isn’t willing to pay $10k a year for insurance even though she is worth million$ (and because it is still mandated), well…
Prayers for her recovery.
@Left Coast Dan: Well said. What gets me, the daughter thinks that GoFundMe’s are for the rich. I feel as those this is a blatant money grab and there’s no embarrassment in asking. As I said above, something doesn’t smell right.
From Google search: Retton managed to accumulate considerable financial worth with her achievements in gymnastics and commercial endorsements. Retton’s estimated net worth is $8 million.4 hours ago
She can’t afford her medical bill? Pleeeeeze!
“and that my guitar skillz were only good for repelling cats”
Seeing gems like this inspires me to slog through the novels you write looking for more.
“Retton’s estimated net worth is $8 million.”
Which is probably why she doesn’t have/need insurance. If I won the billion dollar lottery I wouldn’t bother having insurance. What do you need, Doc? here’s a check. Can I donate a wing to the hospital while we’re at it?
Makes me wonder if the daughter was lamenting life insurance for her own benefit.
My mother had COPD and asthma her entire life. Which is why she and my Dad moved from Philly to Phoenix in 1950. Which is why I hail from AZ. She almost died from pneumonia at age 17 while living in Philly. Eventually, Pneumonia claimed her .. at age 93. If you no longer have an immune system, it will get you
Back in April 2006, the fam went back to Philly. Within a day or two, Philly was hit by a downpour followed by a windy cold front off of the Delaware that cut right thru our jackets.
At which point, I said to my 2 younglings, “So, Kiddies, you understand now why Grandma had to leave Philadelphia?”
When my sibs and I were growing up, our father always preached the importance of getting a job/career that would provide good health insurance during retirement. We all did. I know that’s not possible for everyone, but I worked at that goal very hard all my life.
Kind of sounds like Mary Lou’s kids don’t want to see their inheritance go up in smoke or even be diminished due to medical bills.