For the ACA 16th Anniversary, Protect Our Care’s Theme Week, “Premium Disaster: Fueling America’s Affordability Crisis,” Spotlights Families Already Hit by Skyrocketing Health Care Costs.
Across the country, families are living through a health care cost crisis after Republicans ripped away the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits. These were a lifeline, helping more than 22 million Americans afford coverage through the marketplace. Without them, premiums have skyrocketed — often doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling — forcing people into impossible choices between paying for health care and covering basic needs like rent, groceries, and utilities.
The consequences are playing out at kitchen tables from Alaska to Texas to Maine. Hard-working families are being pushed to the brink, downgrading to bare-bones plans that don’t meet their needs, falling behind on payments, draining savings to keep up with monthly premiums, and even dropping coverage altogether. From cancer patients struggling to afford their treatments to small business owners and farmers trying to stay covered, families are being forced to gamble with their health and financial security.
With 50 stories from 50 states, this is a snapshot of how the Trump-GOP health care crisis is unfolding nationwide. These are the people bearing the brunt of Republicans’ devastating health care cuts, feeling the pain of skyrocketing costs, making impossible tradeoffs, and facing the consequences of losing affordable coverage.
As Protect Our Care wraps up its nationwide, seven-figure March campaign, “Technical Foul: The GOP’s Health Care Madness,” these stories are proof of the damage being done and underscore what is at stake for millions of Americans.
Alabama
Adrienne Gilspie
- “Her eldest, who recently graduated, has a rare condition that has put him into heart failure. ‘For years the ACA has been a lifesaver for me because my kids could get full coverage that I could afford,’ Gilspie told AL.com.”
- “But, if he can’t go back to work, it could jump even higher: $533 a month. He’s been on leave from his job because of his condition – and without an income he becomes ineligible for the subsidies altogether, and would fall into Alabama’s Medicaid gap.
- “‘I really worry about my son and his condition,’ Gilspie said. ‘He needs to finish his cardiac rehab so he can get back to work and be completely clear. I’m scared to cut his insurance and stop the progress he’s making or have something else happen down the line.’” [AL.com]
Alaska
Nan Schleusner, Anchorage
- “The tax credits made marketplace plans affordable for them for the first time, just as Schleusner and her husband were getting older and encountering more health concerns. ‘Thank God’ they got the insurance, Schleusner said, because in 2022, she was diagnosed with cancer. ‘It was really wonderful when the enhanced premium tax credits took effect, because it helped with these extreme medical bills that we ended up having,’ she said. ‘It was just that peace of mind, like, OK, it’s still a stretch — it’s not inexpensive — but we can do it.’”
- “To keep the same plan she currently has next year, she’d pay more than 300% of this year’s cost, with premiums totaling over $52,000 annually. ‘It makes me want to throw up every time I look at it,’ she said. ‘There’s the affordability part, but there’s the ‘what on Earth is going on that this is costing $50,000 a year?’ That’s not a reasonable cost,’ she said.” [Anchorage Daily News]
Arizona
Kelly Badeau, Tucson
- “Her current ACA silver plan ‘is the best insurance I’ve ever had,’ she says.”
- “‘With the ACA, I’m healthier both mentally and physically,’ she says. She says she doesn’t want to drop her current plan. ‘I’d rather eat nothing but PB&Js than give up my health insurance,’ she says.”
- “But Badeau worries that she might have to start cutting corners in her health if she has too many medical expenses and can’t afford the co-pays. She takes blood pressure medication and hormone therapy for menopause. ‘I’m just trying to keep my head above water until I can get Medicare, but that’s still many years from now,’ she says.” [NPR]
Arkansas
Ginny Murray
- “The Arkansas couple plan to drop their coverage, betting their savings will be enough if unexpected illness strikes. ‘Our plan is to keep putting the money we’re already paying towards health care in savings,’ said Murray, whose insurance is covered through the Affordable Care Act, ‘and really just hoping that we don’t have a stroke or we don’t have a heart attack.’”
- “The cost could more than triple if the subsidies expire. ‘What other choice do we have?’ Murray said.” [NBC News]
California
Carin Lenk Sloane, Davis
- “‘And now my husband and I are both talking about leaving the U.S. to go to a country where we are not being forced into debt just so that we can have basic health care,’ she said. Next year, her family’s health insurance bill will jump from $1,500 to $3,700 a month — that’ll cost her more than $44,000 a year for a high-deductible plan.”
- “Another option that Slone is considering is forgoing coverage all together — a once unthinkable step for someone who calls herself cautious and practical. But she worries about her husband, who loves cycling and water sports. ‘He does dangerous things,’ she said. ‘And I’m like, if we don’t have health insurance, you’re gonna have to really curtail your activities that keep you happy and keep you healthy.’” [KQED]
Colorado
Chelsey Baker-Hauck, Denver
- “‘Covering $700 a month would be a hardship. A thousand dollars is almost as much as my mortgage. $1,400 is more than my mortgage. I just wanna cry, honestly,’ Baker-Hauck said.”
- “‘I mean, I don’t know how anybody could make that work. I’ve made it work this far by borrowing from savings. Savings is now gone,’ said Baker-Hauck, who noted she and her husband are considering what to do next. ‘We have credit card debt now, which we haven’t had in 20 years. We’re talking about getting a (home equity line of credit) on our house to pay for some of this,’ she said. ‘But honestly, I don’t know how we could pay that off. So I don’t know that that’s really a viable option. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m stuck.’” [CPR]
Connecticut
Renee Shallis, Milford
- “Her family will have to rethink everything — from where they buy groceries to whether they can reuse last year’s winter coats — and how they’ll keep up with utility bills for the larger house they just moved into. In the meantime, she’s putting major plans on hold, like postponing a family vacation for the fourth year in a row and delaying her bilateral knee replacements to treat worsening arthritis. ‘I wanted to get it done before my kids graduate high school, so I want them around to help me while I’m recovering from that,’ Shallis said. ‘But I’m definitely gonna have to put that on hold, and I don’t know if that’s going to be indefinite or not.’”
- “Other options to help cover the premium spike may include her kids finding summer jobs to help with some of the costs that Shallis would have covered, such as school lunches or field trips. Shallis said her sons are starting to look at colleges, but she worries about her current finances and incoming changes may impact their futures.” [CT Insider]
Delaware
Kathryn Buchovecky
- “To keep their current plan, Buchovecky told her husband it would cost them nearly $3,000 a month. ‘And he kept saying, ‘You’re doing something wrong.’ I’m like, believe me, I wish I was doing something wrong,’ she said laughing. ‘He’s like, ‘You’re gonna have to show me.’ So, I showed him and he’s like, ‘Something’s wrong with the system, this can’t be right.’”
- The added costs this year means they’ll have to use money they had saved for living in retirement and had planned to contribute to college funds for their grandchildren, Buchovecky said. But she knows that others are in far worse situations, she said, which has left her feeling distressed and enraged. ‘I’ve lost sleep. A lot of sleep.’” [WHYY]
Florida
Skylar Trujillo, Spring Hill
- “Skylar Trujillo, a Florida mother with breast cancer, is scared she won’t be able to find the low-cost health insurance she needs during her treatment. Trujillo, 29, said pandemic-era subsidies allowed her to secure coverage for $14 a month through the Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare.”
- “‘That $14 premium is saving my life,’ said Trujillo, a Spring Hill mother of four who was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer and spoke at a Florida Democratic Party news conference Monday. ‘For my premium to go up … to even $50 a month, it would potentially push my family over a financial cliff. I will have to choose between continuing my care, paying my rent and feeding my children.’” [Orlando Sentinel]
Georgia
Lindsay Corley, Atlanta
- “The syndrome responds to treatments, including specialty drugs that Corley pays for with insurance she gets from the Affordable Care Act. ‘It’s the difference between having a quality of life and having no quality of life,’ she told me. ‘I’d be spending my life on a couch.’ But she says the only way she can afford the insurance is with subsidies worth several hundred dollars a month.”
- “But she says that the coverage is enough for her to get by—barely—and that she’ll be in big trouble if its price jumps. ‘Will it mean I have to move back with my parents?’ Corley said. ‘Will I have to take less medication, and just be in a lot more pain?’ ‘These are the things that go through your mind,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure people understand that.’” [The Bulwark]
Hawaii
Shelley Oats-Wilding, Honolulu
- “She went through the Affordable Care Act marketplace to get it but has found it to be expensive. At the start of this year, her rates went up to $1,200 a month from $900 a month and are set to rise again next year. ‘The last two months, I’ve had to not pay myself,’ she said. ‘So I got out of the insurance because it was so expensive.’” [Honolulu Star-Advertiser]
Idaho
Bill and Shelly Gall, Meridian
- “The early retirees, who are on an insurance plan purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, spent upwards of $20,000 on health-care expenses and insurance premiums in 2023 and in 2024, largely due to chronic health issues and emergency eye surgeries.”
- “‘People like us, we need insurance,’ said Bill, a civil engineer who retired in 2022.”
- “‘If there are no subsidies, we’ll pay the difference. We’ll be out there paying the $1,700 a month,’ Bill said. ‘You do the math. It’s a lot.’”
- “If they lose the enhanced subsidies and their financial load becomes too challenging, Bill could try to find part-time work, he said. ‘I don’t want to. I have one eye, and it doesn’t work very great.’” [CNBC]
Illinois
Lisa Brennan Winefield, Chicago
- “Lisa Brennan Winefield has less than two months to get in as many health screenings as she can before she likely becomes uninsured once again.”
- “But what’s most pressing for Brennan Winefield, who lost her dad to colon cancer at just 42 years old, is scheduling a colonoscopy before her health insurance likely ends in December.”
- “Without a screening, ‘I would die of colon cancer,’ Brennan Winefield says, her voice rising with conviction. ‘The Affordable Care Act is, literally, keeping me alive.’” [WBEZ]
Indiana
Martine Locke, Irvington
- “She and her wife have been paying about $670 each month for a plan on the Health Insurance Marketplace. The option, created under the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — covers people who are self-employed or aren’t offered insurance through their jobs. But now, the couple has been priced out: their new premium will be $1,500 or more. ‘I’m in shock,’ Locke told Mirror Indy. ‘We want to pay for the policy, but it’s impossible to afford.’”
- “As her coverage ends, Locke plans to pay cash for regular check-ups and doctor visits. But she’s crossing her fingers, hoping she and her wife won’t suffer any major injuries or illnesses next year. ‘We look after ourselves well, but you just never know,’ Locke said. ‘The thought of medical debt wiping out everything we’ve worked for is terrifying.’” [Mirror Indy]
Iowa
Seth Watkins, Clarinda
- “‘I really want people to understand, it’s not markets or weather that will put me as a farmer out of business,’ Watkins said. ‘It’s a catastrophic health issue.’ Watkins said his family’s premiums could jump from about $600 a month to more than $2,300, with total health care costs exceeding $40,000 a year once deductibles and out-of-pocket limits are factored in. ‘That’s $25,000 a year less that I’ve got to spend,’ he said, adding he and others wouldn’t be upgrading pickups or buying other equipment as a result.” [Progressive Farmer]
Kansas
Dawn Wheeler, Edwardsville
- “‘The anxiety that this has produced does not help people like me who are fighting chronic illness,’ Wheeler, from Edwardsville, Kansas, told The Independent.”
- “At her lowest moments last year, Wheeler said she often thought about her death if she could no longer afford insurance. ‘It would just be a slow, painful death,’ she said. ‘Maybe not even a slow one. It might be pretty quick, and that’s what people are facing.’” [The Independent]
Kentucky
Noah Hulsman, Louisville
- “Hulsman didn’t consider dropping health insurance, because Kentucky has limited consumer protections for medical debt. But he said he’ll try to get an estimate if he needs to go to a doctor. And he’s worried that a major accident could wipe out his skate shop. He won’t be able to buy inventory or pay shop bills if he has to meet his full deductible, he said. ‘I’m just riding the line right now,’ the skateboarder said. ‘One slip and it’s gonna be uncomfortable.’” [CBS]
Louisiana
Kaden Cable, Farmersville
- “‘Cable says he and his wife Rachel, they depend on those subsidies in order to afford their health insurance. Rachel has medical conditions that require expensive prescriptions.’ ‘And if my wife gets sick, she may die, and we can’t afford it. If I get sick, I can’t go to the hospital because we can’t afford it.’”
- “‘It feels like to me, they’re putting a gun against my head and just saying, you don’t really have any choice if this bullet goes in your brain or not, where. Still gonna fire, and it’s just utter and complete heartbreak. I’m shaking now thinking about it, it’s it’s really hard.’” [WWNO]
Maine
Kristin Fuhrmann-Simmons, Kennebunkport
- “‘While I was in a road race in 2017, I lost vision in my right eye and mobility on the right side of my body,’ she said. ‘I was diagnosed with multiple demyelinating lesions in my brain and increased brain pressure. It turned out that I had MS.’”
- “This treatment is expensive, but she says her ACA health insurance is manageable with the enhanced tax credits. ‘Without those tax credits, our monthly premium would be $2,000 a month,’ she said. ‘With those enhanced tax credits, we pay $11 a month for our health care premium.’”
- “‘We live very tightly, we have an exacting budget,’ she said, explaining both her and her husband are self-employed. ‘If I have to say, OK, I’m going to skip my spinal tap, then I have to look, is that pressure going to go up? Is the demyelinating lesion in my eye going to degrade so that my vision disappears in my right eye? What am I trading off the financials for? Maybe I’ll go blind. Maybe I won’t be able to walk as well. That’s a really difficult decision to make.’” [WMTW]
Maryland
Chris and Donna Vetter, Somerset County
- “Chris and Donna Vetter have made the agonizing decision to drop their health insurance, saying they simply cannot afford it. They relied on their ACA plan — reduced to $401 a month by the enhanced subsidies — to manage Donna’s asthma and Chris’ atrial fibrillation. But next year, their premium is set to skyrocket to $1,975 a month — nearly half their income. They pored over options on the ACA marketplace but say even the cheapest plans hovered near $1,000 a month.
- “‘I’m just scared, and I don’t know what to do,’ Donna said. ‘If anything should go wrong — God forbid a car accident, heart attack, cancer — we’ll have nothing.’” [CNN]
Massachusetts
Tamara Modig, Fitchburg
- “Modig knows it’s almost certainly going to rise next year, though she won’t learn how much until spring. Already, her out-of-pocket maximum this past year increased by $1,000, to $4,000. The family doesn’t take vacations, drives only used cars, and lives on a strict budget — which is about to get even stricter. ‘You wonder if you can make that pair of shoes last longer,’ Modig said. ‘Does last year’s coat still fit the kids?’” [Boston Globe]
Michigan
Mathew
- “‘I find myself in the middle of some sort of rom-com plot,’ he says. ‘For me to be able to see my doctor to tend to my autoimmune disease, I had to marry my best friend — it’s like some weird twisted plot of Will and Grace.’”
- “So as he was weighing what to do about his insurance, one night, she turned to him. ‘She’s like, I have great insurance — why don’t we get married?’ he says. ‘And I said, ‘Well, that’s so weird because I’m gay.’’”
- “It frustrates Mathew to find himself in this situation. […] Not everyone, he says, has a best friend they can marry to get affordable health insurance.” [NPR]
Minnesota
Becky Montpetit, Rochester
- “Last year, we received a premium tax credit of $381 for our family a month. That brought our health insurance price down to $1,560 a month for a family of four this year,” she said. ‘Right now, it looks like the best option for a family is going to be about $2,200 a month.’”
- “Back at her home office, Becky Montpetit said she and her husband may have to dip into their retirement savings to pay for a new plan. They’re both considering taking second jobs with health insurance benefits. She said it seems unfair to raise insurance costs on artists, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who venture out and are self-employed. ‘It does feel as though we’re penalized for seeking a non-traditional career path by having to pay exorbitant health care prices,’ she said.” [MPR News]
Mississippi
Marie, Yazoo City
- “Marie lies awake at night, worrying about how she will afford health insurance in January. Her monthly premium is rising from $20 to $75 — a nearly fourfold increase — and she doesn’t know what she will do. The 48-year-old from Yazoo City, who is being identified by her middle name due to privacy concerns and fear of retaliation, has chronic kidney failure, high blood pressure and fibromyalgia, a chronic condition that causes widespread body pain and fatigue.”
- “But Marie said she and her husband, who works, can’t afford the higher price tag, nor can they pay the out-of-pocket costs of her care if she turns down coverage. ‘If I don’t have my blood pressure medicine, that’s going to be bad,’ she said. ‘I probably won’t live long.’” [Mississippi Today]
Missouri
Roberta Ross-Fisher, Franklin County
- “‘I’ve been having conversations with my husband,’ she said. ‘What do I do? I’m now a cancer patient. Do I risk going for six months without insurance?’”
- “For Ross-Fisher, the nearness of her 65th birthday in 2026 makes it tempting to drop coverage. And before her cancer, she said, she would have chanced those six months. Now she’s leaning toward seeking full-time work. ‘That would mean the end of my consulting business, which I dearly love,’ she wrote in an email, ‘but under the circumstances I think it would be the most financially prudent thing to do.’” [Springfield News-Leader]
Montana
Erin Sargent, Missoula
- “‘The plan that I’m currently on would go from $161 to $414 but I actually downgraded,’ said Erin Sargent, a Missoula resident who’s enhanced premiums expired.”
- “‘I am really lucky that I was able to scale back and that still works for my budget, but I really am worried that so many people are going to decide to go without health care for this year, and I just don’t think that’s a risk that people should be deciding. People shouldn’t have to decide about health care versus groceries,’ said Sargent.” [NBC Montana]
Nebraska
Gladys Harrison, North Omaha
- “‘I need those tax credits to be able to afford insurance so that I can go and be seen by a doctor when I need to be seen,’ Harrison said.”
- “Even on a budget, Harrison said the potential increase is simply too much. ‘I’ve already cut back on things that are unnecessary,’ she said. ‘There isn’t any place else for me to cut back at.’” [WOWT]
Nevada
Alison, Carson City
- “They are contemplating buying a less expensive plan with a much higher deductible, though that will force them to think twice about going to urgent care or the emergency room. ‘Just to even be in a situation where you have to think about, well, do I really need it? Do I really need that medication? Do I really need to go to the urgent care? God forbid, do I really need to go to the ER or can I, for lack of a better word, suck it up?’ said Alison, who asked that only her first name be used because of her husband’s former profession. ‘I mean those are all decisions that we’re going to be forced to have to make.’” [CNN]
New Hampshire
Amy Franklin, Plainfield
- “She has a seizure disorder that requires constant medication and a yearly neurologist visit, placing her in New Hampshire’s ‘high-risk pool.’ ‘Without health insurance, (the condition requires) for sure a cost that, you know, has an impact on my household income,’ Franklin said.”
- “Depending on the cost, she will either have to turn to the private market or be left uninsured. As someone in the ‘high-risk’ pool, the private market would have ‘unreasonable’ prices, such as the $800 monthly premium presented to her before she found her plan purchased through the marketplace created by the ACA.” [Valley News]
New Jersey
Eric and Lisa Frankenfeld, Point Pleasant
- “The Point Pleasant, New Jersey, couple will no longer be able to afford their Obamacare plan after the enhanced premiums subsidies lapse at year’s end. They decided to forgo coverage after learning that their plan’s premium will skyrocket to $1,928 a month, up from $340 this year.”
- “‘We are health care providers who cannot afford benefits. Oh, the irony,’ she told CNN. ‘Purchasing a plan doesn’t make financial sense. We’re just going to cross our fingers and hope for the best.’” [CNN]
New Mexico
Carmen Meyer, Albuquerque
- “‘When I saw our new health insurance premium, I burst into tears.’”
- “‘We live carefully. We drive older used cars, cook at home, rarely eat out and don’t take fancy vacations. We’ve worked hard, stayed on top of our finances and saved. We are not living a life of luxury — we are living a life of responsibility. And still, the cost of health insurance nearly knocked us off our feet.’” [Albuquerque Journal]
New York
Cyndi Freeman, Brooklyn
- “‘At this point, budgeting for the future feels uncertain,’ Freeman said. ‘We’re focused on getting through month to month.’ Freeman, who works at a bar, hosts a podcast and coaches private clients, said she logs roughly 60 hours a week across the three jobs — and still dips into savings. ‘We’ve made significant cuts. We bargain-shop for groceries, but with rising food prices, that only helps so much,’ she said. ‘None of these jobs are particularly high-paying.’”
- “Her husband, Brad Lawrence, also a freelancer, said dropping coverage isn’t an option for them. ‘Between Cyndi’s BRCA2 status and my kidney issues, it is a terrifying prospect to be without it,’ he said.” [MS Now]
North Carolina
Catriona Johnson, Chapel Hill
- “Before the ACA, 44-year-old Catriona Johnson had to live without health insurance for several years because she had a pre-existing condition. She was born with a congenital abnormality that required multiple surgeries in her abdomen and still requires her to use a catheter every day.”
- “‘I have no idea what I am going to do, if I cannot afford care. Just go day by day, keep trying,’ she says.”
- “She wonders, ‘where along the lines did I not do the right thing?’ She worries that the rise in costs for her health insurance will affect her credit, which already happened in her 20s because of medical debt. ‘Everything I can’t pay — on to the credit card, to worry about another day.’” [NPR]
North Dakota
Bailey Graner, Mandan
- “But one thing she says she can’t manage anymore is the cost of health insurance. She dropped it last month. ‘We were told our minimum payment would be over $1,000 a month. That would be $24,000 in getting our basic health that we needed,’ said Graner.”
- “Now, they’ve dropped coverage entirely, and Graner says the risks keep her up at night. ‘It’s scary to think that hope none of us end up in the ICU because this could have huge implications for us being self-employed farmers and ranchers,’ said Graner.”
- “‘I don’t want to leave farming and ranching just to get insurance. I want to farm and ranch. But how can we make it work if health insurance is so expensive?’ said Graner.” [KFYR]
Ohio
Randall Schnieder, Calcutta
- “‘We couldn’t pay our electric bill, we couldn’t get our groceries for Christmas, it blindsided us,’ he said. Schneider received a liver and double kidney transplant two and a half years ago which forced him to medically retire. He is cared for by his wife Kimberly Schneider who claims she does not have her own health insurance to afford her husband’s healthcare policy. ‘I’m just praying nothing comes up, it’s that everything we’ve had has just been keeping him healthy,’ she said.” [WFMJ]
Oklahoma
Sheeva Azma, Norman
- “Azma’s monthly premium will almost double, upping from $434 to $812, a steep rise for her. She keeps a tight budget and determined that she will have to work 24 more hours a month to afford the increase. Azma also anticipates having to use money from her savings. ‘I have this tiny little slush fund, so now I’m just like, I guess I’ll just start taking out of that,’ Azma said. For Azma, going off her insurance isn’t an option. She has a family history of breast cancer and needs a yearly mammogram.” [The Oklahoman]
Oregon
Mac Reid
- “‘I’m diabetic, so I need insulin,’ said Reid. ‘Insulin is the thing that keeps me alive — I mean, truly.’ The ACA subsidies drop the cost of her life-saving medication from about $500 a month to $86 for a three-month supply. ‘It’s been really, really helpful,’ said Reid.”
- “‘What’s going to happen is I’m going to go bankrupt, and then my mom’s going to go bankrupt, and then I’m going to die,’ said Reid. ‘Like, that’s basically what’s going to … that’s the sequence of events if I can’t afford insurance.’” [KGW 8]
Pennsylvania
Julia Tilley, Harrisburg
- “There’s really no way to prepare for it. I mean, how do you suddenly come up with $15,000 more a year? My husband can’t work more because he has a head injury. I work full-time time taking care of my daughter. It’s not like I can go get another job. So we’re stuck.”
- “It’s not just going to affect the people that have insurance. I mean, we’re not going to have insurance, which is going to be catastrophic. People are going to lose their homes. They’re not going to be able to afford their car payments. Already food prices are rising. So something has to give, and it’s going to be health care. People aren’t going to be able to afford it and we’re going to end up with people being sicker.” [PennLive]
Rhode Island
B., Providence
- “In the meantime, she decided, she and her husband would drop coverage and insure only the kids. But it would be risky. ‘My husband works with major tools all day,’ she said, ‘so it feels like rolling the dice.’”
- “After she lost her job, she turned to the ACA marketplace. The family’s “gold” plan cost them nearly $2,000 a month in premiums. It was a lot, and they dug into retirement savings to pay for it while B. kept looking for a new position. […] ‘I don’t have an additional $900 lying around in my family budget to pay for this,’ she said. B. had already pulled $12,000 out of retirement funds to pay her family’s 2025 rates.” [KFF Health News]
South Carolina
Nicole Wipp, Aiken
- “And when Nicole Wipp learned the monthly premium for her family’s ACA plan would be more than their mortgage payment, she and her husband decided to drop their family plan and buy coverage only for their 15-year-old son.”
- “After crunching the numbers, Wipp, 54, a self-employed lawyer in Aiken, South Carolina, said she and her family made the tough call. ‘We decided that, ultimately, it would be better for us to gamble.’” [CBS News]
South Dakota
Lance Boyer
- “He said there’s no question a shutdown is going to hit farm and ranch country hard. ‘Prices are high, they’re not selling any soybeans, input costs are up, I think it’s a tough time for some of those folks right now,’ Boyer said. ‘That’s where the piece on the insurance side will add a big burden to those folks financially.’” [KBHB]
- “It’s not just the hazardous nature of farming that makes health coverage vital for these producers. Boyer said the extra stress they often carry has a way of putting pressure on their health care needs. ‘Long days, stress, you know, that runs a guy down,’ said Boyer. ‘You tend to get sick a little more sometimes.’” [Minot Daily News]
Tennessee
Ragan Grossman, Franklin
- “‘We were about $750 a month. And then we received a letter in the mail that said the tax credits are going away, and your premium will be $3,090 starting January 1,’ Grossman said. The number stunned her. ‘I absolutely thought it was a typo at first,’ Grossman said. ‘I thought for sure maybe I got someone else’s that had a large family or something like that.’”
- “‘I never thought I would be in a position where I was questioning whether we could afford this $3,000 a month for two people,’ Grossman said. Now, she and her husband are considering options they never imagined. ‘We moved to Tennessee because I needed to be near my family. And I don’t want to move. We don’t want to move. I certainly don’t want to switch my job. I love what I do,’ Grossman said.” [News Channel 5]
Texas
Johana Scott
- “Elsewhere, Johana Scott, a Texan battling Stage 3 cancer, warned earlier this month that without her health insurance, she was ‘going to die this year.’ Scott said that her premium spiked from around $200 per month to $1,725 for the same plan after the subsidies expired. Paying that much each month is impossible, as she only makes $1,200 per month, she said. Assuming she could come up with the total, she said she’d have nothing left for groceries or bills. ‘I’ve been crying since December because I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘If I don’t have my insurance, I am going to die this year.’”
Utah
Stacy Cox, Kanab
- “‘I don’t know if I’ve ever cried opening a letter from an insurance or before, but it happened this time. It’s devastating because we can’t afford that. Just that bill right there, that’s more than our mortgage, our insurance, most of our food. That’s what we’re paying per month to live. We can’t afford to double what it costs for us to live just to have health insurance. This will devastate us if we tried to pay it.’”
- “‘It’s already going to be hard for us to have a 52% increase on our premium, and that’s if the credits are extended. But we will do it so that we can have health coverage.’ Cox, 48, is at high risk for breast cancer, has a mammogram every year and a fast breast MRI yearly as well.” [ABC]
Vermont
Arica Bronz, Winooski
- “‘We can’t take out a second mortgage on our house to afford one year of health insurance,’ said Arica Bronz, a pilates instructor from Winooski, where she lives with her husband, a primary care physician, and their two daughters.”
- “Bronz feels she has no choice. She is going to cancel health care coverage for her family. ‘We’re trying to get all the scans done and just make sure we’re tip-top healthy before we make the leap. I can’t tell you how much sleep I’ve lost considering what it’s like to jump in this day and age to no health care for a family.’” [VT Digger]
Virgina
Kathleen Winters, Newport News
- “Winters said she’s recently begun nursing school so that she and her family can have employer-paid health insurance. ‘I can’t have my access to coverage depend on the whims of people who have never been in my shoes, and you know, like Dr. Oz saying that all of these people who are on it don’t need it,’ Winters said. ‘Well, where else are we supposed to get health care from? How else are you supposed to get coverage if you don’t have a job that provides it?’” [Virginia Independent]
Washington
Rebecca Staffel, Seattle
- “‘It seems absurd that I would go work 30 hours a week as a barista for a low rate and then not be able to make the money that I can make as a consultant just so I can afford health insurance,’ Staffel said.”
- “Staffel also considered dropping her health coverage altogether. She and her husband are healthy, regularly exercise and don’t need to go to the doctor very often. They could potentially get by without insurance until they qualify for Medicare, the federal health insurance for people who are 65 and older or who are disabled. ‘That’s the math, but in the end it’s a gut feeling: Are you willing to take this risk or not?’ she said, ‘Obviously if something terrible happens, that could be bankruptcy.’” [KNKX]
West Virginia
Lenny and Mandee Wilson, Charleston
- “The Wilsons each squeezed in one last checkup before the end of 2025 and are now going without insurance. They are planning to put the money they used to spend on their premiums into an emergency fund. They will avoid any preventive care and hope their modest savings can cover any medical costs.”
- “‘If we step off the ladder wrong and make a trip to the ER or have to spend the night in the hospital for any reason, that would pretty much wipe us out financially,’ Lenny said.” [The Wall Street Journal]
Wisconsin
Genna Boatright, Siren
- “But she says without the tax credit, her new premium costs will be $700, based on the numbers she’s seeing in the marketplace. ‘And that I absolutely cannot afford,’ she says.”
- “‘The flood of overwhelm has been real,’ she says. She worries about how she will get coverage she can afford and is ‘trying to make it through the days.’ ‘I do worry that without insurance and specialty care and the medication that I’m on, how quickly I will become disabled,’ she says. ‘And that’s an absolutely terrifying prospect.’” [NPR]
Wyoming
Margie Lynch
- “‘I don’t worry about being bitten by a bear, I worry about getting cancer.’”
- “‘The cost of the premium is almost as much as my mortgage,’ Lynch said. ‘I’m lucky enough to be able to pay for it if I have to. But there are so many people out there who won’t be able to.’” [Washington Post]