Tuesday’s news that Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton is in intensive care at a Texas hospital, “fighting for her life” with a rare form of pneumonia, has alarmed sports fans across the United States. But fans were equally dismayed to learn from her daughters that Retton, a highly decorated public figure who has reportedly earned millions from endorsement deals over the years, has no health insurance.
Because of this lack of health insurance, the eldest of Retton’s four daughters said the family had to start a crowdfunding campaign to help cover the hospital bill. As of Wednesday morning, the Spotfund campaign for Retton, a star gold medalist at the 1984 Olympics, had surpassed its initial goal of $50,000, topping $285,000 and counting.
“My amazing mum, Mary Lou, has a very rare form of pneumonia and is fighting for her life,” Retton’s daughter McKenna Kelley wrote on Spotfund. Kelley also said her mother is unable to breathe on her own and has been in intensive care for more than a week.
“Out of respect for her and her privacy, I will not disclose all the details,” Kelley said. “However, I will disclose that she is uninsured.”
On social media, the idea that Retton’s family will have to ask strangers to pay for what’s expected to be a huge hospital bill has sparked a number of questions and reactions. Top of the list: Why doesn’t Retton have medical insurance? And what kind of country is the United States if even a legendary athlete like Retton can’t pay for an emergency hospital stay?
So far, Retton’s daughters are not providing many details “out of respect for her and her privacy”. The New York Times reported that Kelley, who was a gymnast at Louisiana State University, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Tuesday. In an update on Wednesday, Kelley wrote on Instagram that her mother remains in intensive care, “continues to fight” and is “receiving incredible medical care!”
With little information available, the internet has been left to speculate whether Retton, 55, has chosen to go without health insurance, or if she’s somehow lost or been unable to obtain coverage. People online also noted that she had recently been living in a mansion in Houston, citing a May 2022 report that she was selling her “luxury” 9,000-square-foot home in Houston, which had six bedrooms, six bathrooms and a swimming pool.
In a thread on X, Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist with a large social media following, agreed that the situation “doesn’t make sense”.
“I’m not sure she’s still wealthy. Something must have happened. Otherwise they wouldn’t be crowdfunding her medical bills,” Feigl-Ding said. He agreed with many others: “It’s sad that a former Olympic champion who is so famous now has to beg and crowdfund for medical care. I’m not sure if she’s still a millionaire like some claim – people’s situations can change quickly”.
Since Kelley started the Spotfund campaign, more than 5,100 people have donated amounts ranging from $10 to $50,000. Spotfund allows people to send text messages along with their donations, and the site shows that there has been an outpouring of support for Retton, with words of encouragement from thousands.
Forbes reports that crowdfunding for medical expenses has become commonplace in the 2020s, with many people turning to sites like GoFundMe and Spotfund for help covering the costs of medical emergencies or even basic care.
A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2022 shows that around 10.2% of Americans under the age of 65 don’t have health insurance. According to the study, the number of uninsured people in the US actually decreased by about 1.5 million between 2019 and 2021, largely due to policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The policies were designed to help low-income people gain and maintain coverage during the pandemic, and included enhanced subsidies in the marketplace and a requirement that states maintain continuous enrollment for people on Medicaid, which provides insurance to low-income people.
Most of America’s uninsured are people in low-income families where at least one family member works, the study found. Generally, people of color are at a higher risk of being uninsured. Some 64 percent of adults surveyed said they don’t get insurance because the cost is too high, despite political efforts to make coverage more affordable.
Whatever happens to Retton’s health insurance, she certainly has a lot going for her. In 1984, she became “America’s newest sweetheart” by winning five medals at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, including a gold that made her the first American to win an individual Olympic all-around event, according to the Washington Post.
Her victories earned her a spot on the Wheaties cereal box and raised the popularity of gymnastics – a sport once dominated by Eastern Europeans – in the United States. She also campaigned for Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984, served as an advisor to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness during the George H.W. Bush administration, and led the Pledge of Allegiance on the second night of the 2004 Republican National Convention with fellow former gymnast and 1996 Olympic gold medallist Kerri Strug.
Retton has also appeared on “Dancing With the Stars,” a Dairy Queen commercial and a Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company commercial that the company uploaded to YouTube last week, according to the Washington Post.
Sasha Farber, her partner on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2018, provided an update on Retton’s condition after Tuesday’s episode, telling Entertainment Tonight, “She’s fighting.” Farber also said he had been able to speak with her. “She kind of wants to give up, but I’m sending her videos of her dancing and telling her, ‘There’s only one Mary Lou Retton. You can do this.'”
Shortly before Retton was eliminated from Dancing With the Stars, she revealed that she had separated from Shannon Kelley, her husband of 27 years. The retired gymnast said the divorce had been finalised months earlier. Kelley is a former football quarterback turned college coach, most recently an assistant coach at Houston Christian University.
“I’m on a really good path and I’m happy with my life,” Retton told People magazine at the time. “I’m really excited about what this new chapter is going to bring, instead of being the scared person I was a few months ago. I really have made a complete turnaround.
But as much as many people honour Retton and remember her fondly from the 1984 Olympics, her “America’s Sweetheart” reputation isn’t universally accepted. Some gymnastics fans point out that there’s an asterisk by her victory in the history books because the Soviet Union, then the dominant force in women’s gymnastics, boycotted the Los Angeles Games, according to the New York Times.
More recently, Retton angered many in the women’s gymnastics community when she fought a congressional bill introduced by the late Senator Dianne Feinstein to protect young athletes from sexual predators, according to The Medal Count blog, which covers women’s gymnastics.
Feinstein introduced the bill after Larry Nassar, the longtime team doctor for the US women’s gymnastics team, was charged in 2016 with sexually assaulting at least 265 young women and girls under the guise of medical treatment. His victims included a number of high-profile gymnasts.
A year later, Retton joined officials from USA Gymnastics to unsuccessfully lobby Feinstein against the passage of the bill, also known as the Safe Sport Act, which would require national governing bodies of Olympic sports, such as USA Gymnastics, to report sexual assaults to police, the New York Times reported in 2017. Retton, “the smiling, bubbly darling of the 1984 Games”, was brought along for PR purposes, the New York Times said, to let Feinstein know that the federation’s policies were sound and that gymnastics was “a happy, safe place”. With bipartisan support, the bill eventually became law and was signed by Donald Trump in 2018.
