I wish this were true, but it’s not.
She’s done tons of better things for medical stuff, but this sounds more like a hyperbolic grand sweeping oversimplification of what she has actually done with donations and efforts.
Doing dirty her good deeds with angelic sounding lies… She was more than we deserved already.
(Not bitching at op! I just detest lies made up for drama)
I wish this were true, but it’s not.
It is. https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/dolly-parton-s-health-care-legacy-two-decades-of-giving
No. Read what you linked to:
"Schaefer said the money is meant to fund a pediatric residency training program the hospital hopes to launch this year, telehealth aimed at rural communities outside Knoxville, level one children’s surgical verification through the American College of Surgeons, level four NICU accreditation and recruitment for pediatric neuroscience and epilepsy, gastroenterology and otolaryngology. "
This is not the same as “Paid every bill for NICU”.
edit: You even replied about how there’s no mention in another reply… I am confused as to why you then say here that the tumblr is true?
Source? Just curious how you know but tumblr person doesn’t
As another noted, the tone and writing is super abstracted… “a hospital” …
I can’t 100% DISPROVE this based on the fact there’s no other documentation / mention of this act… anywhere. It’s just all reblogs/posts of this exact text.
With all the other stuff she’s done, how has NOT ONE SINGLE PARENT posted / talked about this?
My own daughter spent her first week of life in a local NICU here. That was 20+ years ago. I still remember the names of the 4 nurses that primarily dealt with her during that time.
If someone, ANYONE, had come forward to pay the 10’s of thousands in costs I had to pay for this, I would STILL be shouting about it to this very day.
Again, I don’t bring this up to detract from Dolly… quite the opposite!!! She was AMAZING! But at the same time fabrications about her actions muddy and dilute the actual acts by blurring it.
Love Dolly, but people pushing for validity on the internet by making up stories to get likes is not the right way to honor her accomplishments and goodness.
If you still doubt, or want proof, then I ask you to provide any evidence this DID happen. I will happily cheer on evidence that she performed this kind of act.
No, that’s fair enough, I too have a grain of salt but i’m erring on the believe side. Neither of us knows. An anonymous post says X, that’s that.
I suspected it was fake just because of the writing style. It reads like easy internet fantasy fiction.
I was able to find a Snopes article, however, that helps settle the matter.
Well, okay but it wasn’t about an animal sanctuary.
The article provides the context that people will sometimes make things up about celebrities when they’re in the news, then gives an example of when it has happened before.
It’s less feasible to prove a negative, “prove that she didn’t do x”. I can’t provide an article about this specific claim because it never happened outside of this block of text. Aside from that, why wouldn’t the hospital still bill insurance, then Dolly cover the rest. Thats just bad finance.
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/dolly-parton-s-health-care-legacy-two-decades-of-giving
East Tennessee Children’s Hospital announced Feb. 26 that it would be renamed Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital.
“I’ve always believed that every child deserves a fair chance to grow up healthy, hopeful and surrounded with love,” Parton said in the video announcement.
The Knoxville hospital has operated since 1937 and describes itself as a freestanding, independent, not-for-profit pediatric health system with 152 beds and close to 40 additional locations across East Tennessee, including primary care, specialty clinics, urgent care and rehabilitation.
Tennessee certifies it as one of four Comprehensive Regional Pediatric Centers in the state, and it is the only hospital in eastern Tennessee dedicated exclusively to the care of children.
About 60% of its patients rely on Medicaid, and philanthropy plays an important role in sustaining the organization, Chief Healthcare Executive reported in March. President and CEO Matt Schaefer called Parton’s contribution a “generational and transformational commitment.”
Schaefer said the money is meant to fund a pediatric residency training program the hospital hopes to launch this year, telehealth aimed at rural communities outside Knoxville, level one children’s surgical verification through the American College of Surgeons, level four NICU accreditation and recruitment for pediatric neuroscience and epilepsy, gastroenterology and otolaryngology.
The hospital is already seeing more interest from clinicians, he said, and he framed the benefit as extending to referring physicians as much as to families.
Schaefer said the hospital expects Parton’s name to lift giving from other donors and that it was already seeing early results.
Dolly Parton’s Contribution to Pediatric Healthcare
Dolly Parton made a significant donation to the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, which is now named after her. This donation supports various services, including the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Impact on NICU Services
- Funding Purpose: Parton’s donation is aimed at enhancing the hospital’s ability to care for newborns, particularly those in the NICU who require specialized medical attention.
- NICU Features: The NICU at Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital is equipped to handle very small and critically ill newborns, providing 24/7 care with a dedicated team of healthcare professionals.
No evidence she paid for individuals. At least via a 30 second web search.
Wow a broken system. Third world country harder America.
There is absolutely some orphan crushing going on here, but Dolly was doing the most morally correct thing she could in the moment.
No hate for Dolly but it is really fucked up too that people get so emotional when a single rich person isn’t a selfish psychopath.
I think most normal people who stumble onto an infinite money glitch would probably spend a lot of it making a better world but the problem is that most of those with that much money clawed, backstabbed, and stole it all away from those around them
Yeah, and honestly this being in Tennessee means it’s insulating a lot of people from the consequences of who they vote for.
Nearly all their congresspeople are/have been actively working to dismantle public healthcare in the US, and these mothers get their hospital bills payed by a celebrity while mothers in other states have to go into debt for maternity care?
There are no good billionaires.
Dolly Parton was not a billionaire.
Her net worth was 0.6 billions.
The only thing stopping her from being an actual billionaire was her being good.
Not specifying them just rich people are not a good thing for anyone.
Healthcare in the US = GoFundMe. None of the real first world countries have this beggar system for health.
Americans should put up statues of her in their parks instead of old dead racists.
Stick the link on Proton Drive instead.
It’s a google maps link.
Ok!
Fred Rogers is the only one in recent memory who could share a spotlight with Dolly Parton.
Maybe as far as their outward generosity, but Bob Ross and Levar Burton and Steve Irwin were inspirational in other ways.
Let’s add Steve from Blues clues and Ms. Rachel as upcoming honorees on the mount Rushmore of people who deserve to be in Mount Rushmore but are good enough people they’d hate being part of Mount Rushmore
Hold on - is Levar Burton dead? did I miss that?
Oh no he’s just shoe-in
Dolly and Steve coulda been on this mythical Rushmore before they died too.
Levar Burton was found alive and well in his bed this morning.
Just checking :)
(It is a sad but true fact I am learning about most celebrity deaths either via “trending topics” or random posts on tumblr or here.
Mostly because I don’t watch the news any more).
Huh. Her only charity that I was aware of was the kids books, which, while super cool, amounts to crumbs from someone with that much wealth. I had her filed with other ‘philanthropists’ whose contributions add up to a small fraction of what they should be paying anyway via taxes, but our laws are shit, so they don’t.
Doing charity and not making a scene about it though, huge respect! I wonder what else she was involved in.
I’m thinking my initial reaction was way too crass - apologies for acting shitty.
A year or two ago someone was trying to figure out how some low-income schools were able to get new uniforms for their bands every year. Turned out Dolly had been quietly donating new uniforms to them for decades.
More broadly, she donated massive amounts of money to schools, starting with her home county. When she was in school, her high school had about one in three students drop out. That number dropped to one in twenty. The Dollywood theme park literally just exists to create jobs in Dolly’s community because the unemployment rate was pretty high. Employees are quite well paid before factoring in the total coverage of their healthcare, their family’s healthcare, and their and their family’s college education. The profits then go to the Dollywood Foundation, which operates things like the Imagination Library.
How rich do you think she was? She wasn’t a billionaire. The millions she put into that charity were not as much of a crumb to her as Taylor Swift’s $2 million donation to it.
650 million. Not billionaire, but still -usually- guillotine territory. The more I’m reading about Dolly, the more I’m seeing that she did infact make herself a net positive to humanity, hence my apology. If you had the misfortune of seeing my posts when the news of her death was breaking, I kinda just shrugged it off as another rich hoarder biting the dust, but I was very much in the wrong.
Different thread, but the Lemmy community is still small enough that common posters become familiar, so if you’re reading this thread odds are good you read the other one, too.
Anyway, what I posted was shitty, and I wanted to own up to that - you all deserve better.
You didn’t say anything shitty, you just didn’t know the full picture.
Everything about Dolly Parton can be summed up in how she chose to spread her wealth instead of getting richer. If she parked her wealth into investments like most rich people or celebrities, she’d have been a multi-billionaire a decade ago. She was still very wealthy thanks to an insane amount of musical and movie success but she did coordinate that wealth into good more than most. For example, the reason she made Dollywood was to give her extremely impoverished home county a booming industry and revenue. The park didn’t even have anything specifically Dolly Parton themed until a couple of years ago too, most of its life was dedicated to the characters from the various children’s books she distributed through the Imagination Library so kids could recognize characters when they visited her park.
She was the rare example of someone who got a massive amount of wealth through her own efforts and then used it to help others as much as possible. Her charities weren’t tax shelters, she really did contribute a lot to society on her own (very considerable) dime. When people say they wished rich people would help society more with their wealth, Dolly’s who they’re thinking of.
Healthcare in the US = GoFundMe. None of the real first world countries have this beggar system for health.
Gods dammit, now I’m crying again.
Americans going anti science and then having to pay the bill when they get sick is kinda funny though.
Yeah, it was hilarious when a friend’s immunocompromised 6 year old died because stupid old fucks don’t believe in science.
