A young girl who created a GoFundMe after her insurance claim for a prosthetic arm was denied is using her $30,000 in donations to buy robotic arms for two other kids.
Remington "Remi" Bateman was born with a missing left hand, and, after experiencing bullying, the 9-year-old girl's family filed an insurance claim for a prosthetic arm, which her doctors also deemed medically necessary, according to her GoFundMe.
Jami Bateman, the girl's mother, said that Select Health denied their insurance claim and two appeals, maintaining it was "not medically necessary."
Since the young girl's family would have to pay $24,000 out-of-pocked for a Hero Arm, they decided to start a GoFundMe. Its virality led to a barrage of donations before CrowdHealth, a peer-to-peer healthcare company, offered to pay for Remi's prosthetic arm in full, as reported by KUTV.
Since Remi no longer needed the money, she decided to use her donations to pay for the Hero Arm of a boy named Taj, as his GoFundMe had hit just under 15% of his $10,000 goal.
"Being able to help Taj means a lot to me, as soon as I saw that I had raised enough money to help someone else I wanted to. There's another girl, called Faith, she's 10, I want to help if we can keep fundraising. She is also trying to get a Hero Arm," Remi told Open Bionics.
Remi's family hopes to continue advocating for their daughter and every other kid facing the same insurance challenges.
"The reason we shared Remi's story in the first place was to raise awareness of the impact insurance denials have. Remi absolutely needs this device to aid her in two-handed tasks and activities. It is going to support her spinal and shoulder health as she grows too," Jami told Open Bionics.
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