Gary Stein

My family and I often had to make health care decisions based on finances. The results were disastrous: either our finances suffer or our health does. This scenario plays itself out everyday across our great nation and a change has to come.

On October 12, 2009, the Impact page was about 16 hours away from launch. We had everything ready to go -- except a lead story.

This week, we launched Impact, our new section devoted to giving back. Thanks to the compassion and generosity of our HuffPost community, it immediately lived up to its name, raising over $30,000 to help the mom who, saddled with medical debt, went blind so her kids wouldn't have to.