Topics Archives:

In 2018, Nate went to MyBenefitsKeeper to find a health insurance plan and chose one called Lifeshield. His mother had recently been told by her insurance that to keep a dependent on her plan, her monthly premium payment would increase by $300 a month, which the family could not afford. Due to the sudden nature […]

Holly’s entire family, including herself, her husband, 11-year-old daughter and 19-year-old stepson had been covered for more than a decade by her husband’s employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). The family came to rely on this insurance for all their needs, as Holly’s employer does not offer health insurance. “Our insurance coverage is vital to our family — […]

Elizabeth is a self-employed real estate agent in northern Virginia. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in June 2012. While she has remained largely asymptomatic for the last few years, she has recently begun to experience symptoms like severe night sweats and difficulty standing for more than a few minutes at a time. In 2013, […]

Around March 18, 2020, Aviva began feeling a sore throat and cough. She wasn’t concerned about it until a few days later. Aviva’s 8-month-old child had strep and her 3-year-old had the flu, so she assumed that she had either of those. She went to her doctor and tested negative for both. She went home, […]

Anna knew that the COVID-19 crisis was a big deal. She has Lupus, which makes her immunocompromised. She also had a conference in San Antonio on March 4. As a Ph.D. candidate graduating in May, she needed to make the connections she could get at the conference, but on March 3rd it was announced that […]

I have multiple conditions that would make a lapse of coverage disastrous, and through which I have seen the importance of the Affordable Care Act. I suffered a serious injury in 1997, before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, during a lapse in coverage. I had just begun a new job and was in […]

Evens is overjoyed to have insurance again after going 10 years without. “If something happened, it would cost me a lot of money that I could never repay,” he said about his uninsured years. Now, he is covered. When Evens was working full time as a driver for a bus company, he had employer-sponsored insurance. […]

A gynecological surgery meant that Mary Wanalo, 55, would be denied insurance based on a preexisting condition for the next 14 years. Unfortunately, the condition that necessitated the surgery eventually returned. Mary knew she couldn’t afford the $35,000 procedure, so she waited until her doctors said she couldn’t hold out any longer. Thankfully, the marketplace […]

Stephanie Burton is an attorney and a single mother of four. To begin law school, she had to quit her job and she subsequently lost her insurance coverage. While her kids were covered by the state, Stephanie did not qualify for coverage and independent plans were upwards of $700/month. Stephanie was covered during her 2009 […]

Paul Gibbs was born in with a serious medical condition in both kidneys, which required him to have 9 surgeries before he was 5 years old. When he eventually needed a kidney transplant as an adult, he was uninsured, as it was very hard for someone born with serious medical issues to get insurance before […]