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Bill McAdams built a 13-year career as an emergency room nurse, caring for people at their most vulnerable. In September 2025, he had an ischemic stroke while on assignment in Indiana — and woke up with a $93,000 hospital bill. Uninsured, he navigated the charity care system with the same determination he brought to his patients — only to be denied, misled, and pushed to a breaking point that ended in a second stroke.
Mariah Plante works full time in Wyoming County, West Virginia, while serving as the primary caregiver for her brother Matt, who is legally blind and has nonverbal autism. Medicaid keeps Matt living at home with family rather than in a facility — but as threats to that coverage mount and the cost of her own ACA plan climbs, Mariah is navigating an impossible balancing act that millions of working caregivers across the country know all too well.
A Pennsylvania mother dropped her own health insurance to keep her husband and children covered — a decision that nearly cost her life when an untreated infection progressed to sepsis.
Britney Lynn found a medication that worked to manage her diabetes — until her insurance stopped paying for it. Trying to manage her condition without access to the drugs she needs caused her to lose her job and can cost hundreds of dollars a month out-of-pocket, leading Britney to forgo care or use less effective medications with worse side-effects.
Dee Burrell was 50 years old when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and spent three years in treatment — and while her health insurance helped, she quickly learned that even covered patients can fall through the cracks of America's broken health care system.
After years without proper monitoring of a known liver condition, Liliana Zelaya was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer in March 2025 — and then spent seven months waiting for treatment while her son Leo battled their Medicare Advantage insurer through failed authorizations, inaccurate network information and contradictory cost estimates. She died in January 2026 at 74.
When Barbara Ingram-Rice enrolled in Medicare at 65, she expected the transition to be straightforward. She had spent years managing her husband's coverage and knew how to shop for a plan. But nothing prepared her for the moment a $10-a-month medication became $650 overnight. What followed was weeks of research and a discovery that saved her thousands of dollars a year.
When 32-year-old Minnesota resident Kaylean DiFiori was diagnosed with diabetes in 2025, her doctor immediately created a treatment plan to help control her blood sugar. But managing the condition quickly became more than a medical challenge. It became a financial and administrative battle with her insurance company.
For more than 30 years, Michelle Fry worked in the health care system in Illinois. She built her career in primary care, dialysis and orthopedics, spending 24 years in orthopedics alone. Over that time, she shared she has “seen a lot of change in the medical field, mainly cost,” adding, “I think the cost is outrageous. I don't think it should be that expensive.” She saw how the system functioned behind the scenes. Now, as a patient, she is experiencing it for herself.
Maggie Sanchez is a Medicaid beneficiary, a mother of a child with disabilities, and a caregiver for a loved one living with severe mental illness. When she talks about what proposed federal Medicaid cuts would mean, she is not speaking theoretically.