Displaying 1 - 10 of 17
Michael Best spent 35 years helping others through housing insecurity and crisis, but nothing prepared him for the cost of his own stroke recovery. Between speech therapy he can't afford and loans he'll be paying off for years, he says no one should go into lifelong debt for basic care.
Regina Dixon's health coverage lapsed just one day before she needed emergency gallbladder surgery, leaving her facing a $28,000 hospital bill. She's now racing to scrape together an $814 COBRA payment while juggling rent, car payments, and confusing, unitemized medical bills.
After growing up without medical or dental care through foster care, the justice system, and incarceration, Nature Jackson had to teach herself as an adult what basic family health care even looked like. Now living with injuries from domestic violence and mounting medical debt, she says she still struggles to get treated with dignity, insurance or not.
A survivor of human trafficking and addiction, Cheri Stollar built a career as a trauma therapist while raising six children largely on her own — all of it made possible by Medicaid, which has covered her family "from the beginning." Now a provisionally licensed counselor whose caseload is 95 percent Medicaid recipients, she's watching clients lose access to therapy under new work requirements, even as she wonders whether her own unconventional schedule as a caregiver and provider will put her coverage at risk too.
When Heather Pierce's husband shattered his leg in a fall from a roof, her first thought wasn't just the hospital — it was whether they could afford the ambulance. A former Medicaid and health insurance professional, Heather has spent her career helping others navigate coverage, yet her own family has faced tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt, forcing her to delay surgeries, negotiate cash prices, and weigh her children's safety against what they could afford.
A home care worker in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Lynn Weidner has never known life without medical debt. When her ACA subsidies disappeared and her premium rose to $865 a month, she couldn't downgrade her plan, so she cut her internet, stopped buying beef, and gave up the one family trip she takes each year.
Julia Rion has managed Crohn's disease since childhood, but even with employer-sponsored insurance, she spent $500 to $1,000 a month out of pocket on care, accumulating $5,000 in medical debt in a single year. After losing her job, Medicaid expansion coverage in New York gave her the stability her previous insurance couldn't, but it didn't erase the fear of what a lifetime of chronic illness could cost her.
Priced out of her husband's employer plan, Abbey Diamond decided to stay uninsured, telling herself, "I'll just hope for the best." Then a piece of food became lodged in her throat, leading to emergency surgery and a $17,000 hospital bill she is still paying off, all while she fears what happens to her family's care once her postpartum Medicaid coverage ends.
Keaton Herzer describes navigating his cancer treatment as fighting a system "designed to wear me down and get me to quit." Between insurance denials for a targeted therapy and, later, a life-saving liver transplant, he and his wife drained their savings account and spent a month appealing decisions, all while he was still living scan to scan, unsure if he would survive.
Kelly Gunn, a 46-year-old Virginia resident with employer-sponsored insurance, was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in July 2024 and faced thousands in out-of-pocket costs. She later learned her bill could be slashed by 50% or more once it reached collections, leading her to advocate for transparent, consistent pricing from the first bill rather than after financial hardship sets in.