Medical Care, Aided by the Crowd

watsiTWO years ago, Chase Adam, a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, was riding a bus through a town called Watsi, when a woman got on board asking for money. Her son, she said, needed medical attention and she couldn’t pay for it. As the woman walked through the bus, she showed people a copy of her son’s medical record. Mr. Adam, who is now 26, noticed that nearly everyone donated money.

The experience gave him an idea.

“I thought it’d be really cool if there was a Kiva for health care,” he said, referring to the crowdfunding Web site that allows donors to provide microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Over the next several months, he devoted his free time to creating a business plan for an online start-up that he named after the town where he got the idea. Watsi…

Read More at NYTimes.com



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