New Yorker Who Died of Cancer Raised Enough to Clear $14M in Strangers’ Medical Debt

A New York City woman who passed away on Sunday after battling ovarian cancer is helping lift a burden off others, even in death.

In a social media post her husband shared after she died, Casey McIntyre announced she arranged to help clear medical debt weighing on others, the Associated Press (AP) reported Friday.

“A note to my friends: if you’re reading this I have passed away,” she wrote, adding she loved all of her friends and family and “knew how deeply I was loved.”

“To celebrate my life, I’ve arranged to buy up others’ medical debt and then destroy the debt. I am so lucky to have had access to the best medical care at @MSKCancerCenter and am keenly aware that so many in our country don’t have access to good care,” she continued in a subsequent post.

As of Saturday afternoon, McIntyre’s fundraiser on the nonprofit group RIP Medical Debt’s website had raised $191,522.10.

The group takes care of medical debt bought from hospitals, medical care providers, and the secondary debt market, the AP report said, adding that every dollar someone donates purchases approximately $100 of debt.

Images show the 38-year-old mother enjoying time with her family before she passed away:

According to the fundraiser, “Her greatest gifts and joys were her ready and generous wit, her easy laugh, her devotion to her family and friends, and her astonishing determination and grit.”

While planning her memorial in May, the couple realized what a blessing it would be to help others with their medical debt.

Her husband, Andrew Rose Gregory, said she was very ill before she passed away, “But I knew she wanted to do this memorial and debt jubilee. So I set that up and … did it the way I thought she would have wanted.”