Medicaid
Shanelle Woods: Medicaid Is Not a Privilege, It's a Lifeline
Shanelle Woods lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and has polymyositis, a rare autoimmune disease, along with interstitial lung disease (ILD) and severe asthma. She spent most of her adult life working, including a position at Washington University where she carried employer-sponsored health insurance. Because of her income level, she also received Medicaid as secondary coverage. In 2021, that secondary coverage became her lifeline.
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.
For Gana Mukhtar, a 23-year-old from New Jersey, getting health insurance through her first full-time job was supposed to provide security. Instead, it introduced her to a challenge she had never experienced before: trying to understand and afford health care costs.
After more than 40 years of addiction, Eli McCrary got sober. He is now confronting a cascade of health problems, including a cancer diagnosis, while fighting to keep the Medicaid coverage that was abruptly cut off in the middle of his treatment.
Crystal Schroer, a disabled non-binary artist from Kearney, Nebraska, relies on Medicaid expansion for the mental health care and medications that keep them stable — and on Tarot, their service dog, to bring them back to reality when their disabilities make it hard to stay present. As work requirements reshape Medicaid eligibility, Crystal is watching their lifeline hang in the balance.
After launching her own photography business, Sarah Gardner qualified for MaineCare under Maine's allowance for new business owners to report a loss — coverage that finally made her nine-year-old daughter's medication and her own prescription affordable. But as she works toward turning a profit, she's bracing for the day that coverage will time out and she will be forced into a system where insuring herself and her daughter could cost hundreds of dollars a month she doesn't have.
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.
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."