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Athena Joost, a 28-year-old nurse living in Oregon, knows firsthand how prescription drug prices can impact treatment options. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic condition that can cause debilitating flare-ups. After initial treatments failed, her doctor recommended a biologic medication. Together, they decided on Stelara (Ustekinumab)
Ashley James lives in Jefferson County, West Virginia with her husband who is a disabled veteran. Together they have ten children, and their youngest is 16 years old. She describes herself as a newly married wife and a working mother who depends on Medicaid to stay healthy and able to do her job.
In Princeton, West Virginia, Sarah Allen, who is blind, depends on Medicaid to afford the caregiving support that allows her to live independently. Her experience shows how critical caregivers are to people with disabilities and how low pay and undervaluing their work threaten the stability and dignity that programs like Medicaid make possible.
In Beckley, West Virginia, Cameo Sampson and her husband rely on Medicaid to cover the intensive therapies and medical care their 13-year-old daughter Evelyn needs to thrive. Proposed Medicaid cuts threaten to undo that stability, putting families like theirs at risk of financial ruin and forcing impossible choices about their children’s care.
When her four-month-old son fell from his highchair, Hanna Utkin rushed to the emergency room for help, only to later receive hundreds of dollars in unexpected “facility fees” for a visit that lasted just minutes. Her experience highlights how hidden hospital charges can leave families paying far more than they expect.
Tony is a professor in Pennsylvania who relies on enhanced premium tax credits to afford his gold-level health plan while teaching and supporting his family. Now battling stage four cancer, he fears losing the subsidies that make his coverage—and his care—possible.
Diagnosed with a life-threatening immune deficiency at 19, Brick Williams relies on expensive plasma-based treatments to stay healthy and work full-time as a music teacher. The Affordable Care Act made his self-employment sustainable, but the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits could force him to abandon his career or face financial ruin.
At 61, Delaine Dixon of Texas relies on pain management after multiple spine surgeries, but recent insurance changes and hidden facility fees have made getting care nearly impossible. Living on Social Security, she now faces the impossible choice between paying hundreds in unexpected charges or going without the treatment she needs to manage her pain.
Maureen Malesco of Middletown, New Jersey, utilizes Medicaid to support her daughter, Mairead, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 19 months. “At the time, which was 1999, she was the youngest person in New Jersey to have been diagnosed with autism,” Maureen recalled. Mairead has grown into a capable adult who works at a day program for autistic adults, earning a modest income while living with her mother.
May, a young woman from the Midwest, was diagnosed with a life-threatening pulmonary embolism and prescribed costly blood thinners to prevent another clot. Even with good employer-sponsored insurance, she faced staggering out-of-pocket costs—hundreds of dollars a month—for medication she needed to survive.