Medicaid
Kristina Andrews: A Four-Story Fall and a Health Care System That Wasn't There to Catch Her
At 32, Kristina Andrews fell four stories from her balcony and woke up in the hospital being told to say her last words. She survived a spinal cord injury that doctors said would leave her paralyzed from the neck down, but the care that could help her walk again isn't covered — Medicaid, she learned, doesn't pay for catastrophic events like hers, leaving her to face astronomical costs and an uncertain road to recovery largely on her own.
Jason Miller is a 43-year-old father of four living in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, the western part of the state. Every member of his immediate family lives with serious, complex medical conditions. His four children all have glycogen storage disease, as well as Factor VII deficiency. His wife lives with scleroderma and her own bleeding disorder. Managing it all requires the kind of vigilance most people never have to imagine. The family's ability to maintain this care depends heavily on Medicaid.
Irene Osorio is a seamstress, co-op founder, and mother in Philadelphia whose income shifts week to week as she builds a language justice cooperative from the ground up. For her and her son, Medicaid is the steady ground beneath all of it. "It let me focus on raising my son, growing my business, and staying connected to my community."
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.
A Waterloo, Iowa school worker, Savannah Rucker fell at work in 2024 and broke her wrist and shoulder. A canceled MRI, an unexplained $7,789 facility fee, and a lost workers' comp paper trail have kept her from surgery ever since — even as she was also treated for breast cancer.
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.
Lee Thompson works full time in Nebraska's food industry, but his employer offers no health benefits, making Medicaid essential to his care. When dental pain became unbearable, he had to fight to get an appointment, and a roughly $700 annual dental cap on his coverage left him paying the difference out of pocket for a root canal that, to this day, remains unfinished with no crown.
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.
A Georgia mechanic and caretaker, Paul Mikell spent years avoiding the doctor, treating his own injuries and managing high blood pressure through sheer discipline. Medicaid through Georgia's Pathways to Coverage program changed that