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Jessica is a summer camp director and a teacher. When she was 11 years old, her dad had a heart attack. As a truck driver, her didn’t have access to health insurance, and the hospital bills devastated her family. “It took 15 to 20 years for my parents to pay those bills off,” Jessica said.
That experience made Jessica want to make sure that she always had access to health care coverage. But as a substitute teacher, her health insurance isn’t continuous through the summer. Just before she lost her health insurance before summer break, she had a medical test come back positive for cancerous cells.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was looking at a possible cancer diagnosis with no insurance. The nightmare situation I’d always wanted to avoid.”
Fortunately, Jessica was able to get further tests while she still had coverage, and was not diagnosed with cancer. But she knows that if Medicaid were expanded in Missouri, she wouldn’t have had to worry about not having health insurance coverage. “When a doctor says you might have cancer, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether you can get treatment,” she said.
