Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton has been battling severe pneumonia in a hospital intensive care unit, daughters of the famed American gymnast said.
A Tuesday post on a crowd-funding page by Retton’s daughter, McKenna Kelley, characterized the Hall of Fame gymnast as being critically ill. Another daughter confirmed the illness to NBC News.
On the crowd-funding site, McKenna Kelley wrote: “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.”
Jesus H. Christ. This is Mary Lou Retton. She was possibly the biggest sports celebrity of the 80s. She wasn’t just an Olympian, she was on TV constantly. She was one of the first sports stars women could really look up to.
And she doesn’t have health insurance.
This is such a criminal travesty I don’t even know what else to say but poor Mary Lou. I hope she’s unconscious so if the worst happens, she won’t feel it.
American healthcare is in utter shambles when the family of an icon like Mary Lou has to gofundme for her care.
I hope she makes it through this. 🤞
I dunno if you’ve noticed, but America’s been in shambles a looong time. Education, Literacy, Healthcare, Economic mobility, Gini coefficient, life expectancy — almost every statistic related to standard of living and quality of life for the people (aka the working class) — fell well behind the rest of the developed world by the end of the 20th.
At this point it’s basically a failed state — just a bunch of corporate oligarchs in a trench-coat masquerading as a democracy — that’s halfway through the transition from oligarchy to fascist dictatorship, with both religion and conservatism leading the charge; as is tradition.
Except there is head nodding at working class people being “without”. Mary Lou Retton is a famous celebrity. The assumption is that fame equates to elite status with things the working class does not have. The shock is that even fame can’t get you health insurance.
@WhatAmLemmy It’s Cory’s enshitification applied large, and a lot of us have noticed.
You shouldn’t need health insurance. You should be able to get inpatient and outpatient care with tax payer funds and not walk away with a bill. As a country we should value the lives of the people living here more than we do.
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
There you go being logical again.
If only we valued people for their inherent worth. You can see what a society values by what it spends on. Follow the money. Sounds like as escalated conflict somewhere is brewing that might keep funneling resources to the oligarchs.
Wasn’t she on a Wheaties box? The first Female athlete on a Wheaties box, in fact? General Mills ought to pay back some of those cerealized profits. Heck, just republishing that box might raise enough money.
There’s a whole side issue about how screwed up our medical finance system is, but it’s not gonna get solved in time to pay that bill.
Or, hear me out, we wait until she dies, republish the box in memoriam, rake in the money, drop a couple of million into a donation saying we’ll help people with pneumonia and write off the taxes and claim some publicity! It’s win-win really!
- some General Mills Executive about to get a huge bonus probably
Sir I’d like to offer you a position on our totally not evil board of trustees.
Exactly right.
You think we’d have a system where us Olympians could have the same kind of healthcare senators and Congressman get.
It seems very unlikely that she couldn’t afford it so it not having health insurance may very well have been a conscious choice she made.
‘Rare form of pnuemonia’ -> it’s COVID and she’s unvaccinated.
It seems very suspicious that she could afford this home but didn’t have health insurance. As if not having health insurance was a choice she made rather than a circumstance of her life.
Ummm, so it’s somehow her fault? Victim-blame much?
How do you know she’s unvaccinated? Can you share some context for that statement?
I hope what you’re saying isn’t true, because first of all, calling COVID pneumonia “rare” would seem like an outright lie to me.
But secondly, Retton was a hero to a lot of people, and it would be such a shame if this sort of stupidity became a blemish on her history.
“…a very rare form of pneumonia…” so that equals COVID? Go back to reddit, where facts don’t matter and speculation reigns supreme.
Reddit gonna do it again!
I used to watch Mary-Lou’s Flip-Flop Shop every Saturday morning as a kid. Apparently it was locally produced in Houston, where I lived, so I wonder if it was even known about elsewhere? Basically she had a Saturday morning kids’ show that ran for one season, and it aired at like 6:30am. For some reason I was obsessed with it (despite being slightly older than the target demographic by the time it was airing) and I would wake up ungodly early on Saturdays to watch Mary Lou do somersaults and tell jokes.
As far as I know, it was never broadcast in Southern Indiana. But we had our own local kids’ shows- Cowboy Bob and Janie.
Mary Lou Retton, excitebike, AIDS, Jeopardy, wake up the Orwell in me
Aesop Rock as Malibu Ken, “Acid King” (NSFW/L animated video)
Convenient she’s been pimping out ColonialPenn life insurance. :|
