Protect Our Care: Protect Our Care launches new hub to document the mounting human toll of the GOP Health Care Crisis

Washington, D.C. – Today, as part of our month-long June campaign, Protect Our Care launches “Faces of the GOP Health Care Crisis” — a new hub where readers can scroll and find an interactive state-by-state repository with over 400 testimonies from Americans reeling from premium hikes, hospital closures, and coverage losses. One year after Donald Trump and Republicans gutted over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to bankroll tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, news coverage has documented the mounting human toll. This hub will ensure that the testimonies of Americans from every stripe and every state, including seniors, moms, caregivers, people with disabilities, and small business owners, are front and center in voters’ hearts and minds this November as they go to the ballot box. 

“For months now, hundreds of TV interviews, local news stories, and op-eds have documented Americans speaking out as a last resort, hoping someone, somewhere, will hear their testimony,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “Many are recounting the hours spent sitting around the kitchen table, a pile of bills surrounding them, and getting crushed by skyrocketing premium hikes. Others are chronicling how they were left scrambling after their care was ripped away from them overnight. Donald Trump and Republicans knew this would be the grim reality for millions when they rammed through Congress the largest health care cuts in American history. But they did it anyway — all to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. The ‘Faces of the GOP Health Care Crisis’ hub will ensure that come November, voters remember the stories of their neighbors, friends, and loved ones who were sold out so Republicans could make their rich donors even richer.”

Spanning from Alaska to Wisconsin, here are 15 examples of testimonies you can find in our hub: 

California 

Megan Burkett, 49, nurse practitioner in Arroyo Grande

• “Megan Burkett, 49, a nurse practitioner in Arroyo Grande, Calif., dropped coverage for herself, her husband and her son in the face of escalating costs. She is working three part-time jobs, none of which offer health insurance. Her husband, a contractor, is self-employed and also does not have coverage from work. When she went to sign up for A.C.A. coverage for this year, she found the policy for her family would cost roughly $2,500 a month, in line with her mortgage payment. That contrasts with the $307 a month she paid when she qualified for a federal subsidy last year.”
• “‘On paper, I have a really good job and salary,’ Ms. Burkett said. ‘I can’t afford a second mortgage every month.’” [The New York Times]

Georgia

Pamela Blackstone

• “‘I should not have to make a choice between living, paying my rent or having good health,’ Blackstone said. Blackstone is a single grandmother raising an autistic grandson, while making less than $25,000 a year. She relied on the Affordable Care Act for health insurance but said now, the premiums are nearly impossible to pay. ‘Obamacare jumped from $80 to $412,’ Blackstone said.” [WRDW]

Carry Smith

• “Two years earlier, Smith suffered life-threatening injuries when a deer crashed into her car. None of her jobs offer health benefits, and so she works every day to afford the insurance that keeps her necessary follow-up medical care accessible. ‘What it means to me is my lifeline,’ Smith said.’
• “When the Obamacare reenrollment period started, her jaw dropped. The premium for a new plan offering similar amounts of coverage multiplied seven times: from $47 to $330 per month. Smith had a small stroke of luck. Her car loan payments ended in January, freeing up extra cash to pay for insurance. As long as she kept working 7 days a week.” [The Current]

Maryland

Alice Goldberg

• “This increase has already prompted the music instructor, who has been giving private lessons for almost four years, to reluctantly raise the rates on some of her students. Her plans to buy her first home have also stalled. ‘I have to take all of that expendable income that I have in my mind and put it toward this health care stuff,’ she said.”
• “But, she added, having a health care plan is also important to adequately cover things such as accidents, sickness and mental health. ‘Its a smart thing to do, it’s like a security thing for your body,’ she said. ‘I need these plans to help me stay stable enough to do my job.’” [Capital News Service]

Melissa Gonce and her 28-year-old son Jason

• “Six years later, Gonce no longer worries about whether Jason is being cared for — because now she does the job herself. Under a Medicaid-funded program that allows families to be paid as caregivers, she earns about $67,000 a year to look after him full time, bathing, feeding and keeping him safe.”
• “The program, Gonce said, ‘saved my family.’ Under his mother’s care, Jason’s seizures stabilized and he began making small gains in independence and daily routines. Her constant fears began to ease. Now, families like hers worry that stability could soon collapse.”
• “‘Now I’m faced with a huge decision,’ Gonce said. Will she be able to weather the cuts and keep her son at home — or be forced to send him back into a program she believes failed him?” [NBC]

Michigan

Sharon Dunham, Grand Rapids

• “Sharon Dunham, 63, who twice survived cancer and has health conditions including irritable bowel syndrome, opted to go without insurance this year when she learned that the monthly bill for her ACA plan would grow to about $980, after losing the subsidy that held her payments to about $614 a month in 2025.”
• “Dunham, who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., is trying to save money and pay out of pocket for needed tests and doctor visits until she turns 65 and gets Medicare. ‘It is definitely terrifying,’ particularly the thought that her cancer might recur, she said. ‘There’s the very real possibility that I can’t do anything if it shows up,’ she added.” [Wall Street Journal]

New York

Emily Salerno 

• “For Emily Salerno, the news that labor and delivery services are ending at Newark-Wayne Community Hospital is not abstract. It could affect where she gives birth in August. […]. Salerno said her closest alternative would be Canandaigua, about 30 minutes away, while Rochester could be about 45 minutes away without traffic.”
• “‘It’s going to add a lot of stress toward the end of my pregnancy that shouldn’t be there,’ Salerno said. ‘Our hospital has been able to provide that comfort for a lot of people, and I’m very upset that it’s no longer going to be provided for me.’” [Rochester First]

Engelic Everett

• “Engelic Everett, an author and homeowner who lives on Buffalo’s East Side, said she relies on Medicaid to manage her health. ‘It really hits home for me, because I do — I have lupus, I do have Medicaid, Medicare, and I do have SNAP,’ Everett described. Everett said the consequences of losing coverage would extend well beyond a single insurance card. ‘I have physical therapy, I have counseling,’ Everett said. ‘If Medicaid gets cut, then all my services will be cut as well, too.’” [WKBW]

North Carolina

Bethany and her 10-year-old daughter Naomi Reeves

• “Naomi had a heart transplant when she was four months old, a procedure that even a decade later requires hyper-vigilance and follow-up care that is both non-negotiable and terribly expensive. When Bethany lost her job and her insurance in 2023, she and Naomi would have lost access to the care keeping her alive, running, and jumping if it weren’t for Medicaid. Naomi was on Medicaid for 18 months while Bethany aggressively looked for another job, but a pause in her care of even a single day could have had devastating consequences.”
• “There is no part of Naomi’s care that is a luxury or optional, Bethany said. ‘That’s just a fact. There is no, ‘Well, let’s go without for this month and we can pay for it next month,’ she said.” [Cardinal & Pine]

Dennis, Jennifer, and their 11-year-old daughter Finley Thomas

• “Medicaid, they said, covers about 95% of Finley’s care. ‘The ventilator, the feeding pump, we have to have these things for our show to go on. They aren’t options,’ Sandra Little, Finley’s day time nurse of nearly four years, said. ‘You need what you need,’ she said.”
• “Dennis and Jennifer have been trying to make their equipment and supplies last longer, just in case any funding goes away. ‘You have to change her trach every week and the max it can be reused is three times,’ Dennis said. But even that can be dangerous. ‘The more you reuse them, the more likely it is for her to get an infection,’ Jennifer said.”
• “They often have to fight for every single piece of Finley’s care. ‘No one wants to be in this situation where you’re having to jump through all these hoops to get the medical supplies you need for your child,’ Jennifer said. ‘I would be interested to find out where they think this waste is coming from,’ she said. ‘I believe that a good majority [of Medicaid recipients] just want to take care of their kids.’” [Cardinal & Pine]

Ohio

Sarah Smith, Lima

• “Sarah Smith, a 53-year-old office manager who lives in Lima, Ohio, relinquished the ACA plan that covered her and her 20-year-old son, Andrew, because the cost jumped to about $700 a month this year after she lost her federal subsidy, compared with about $150 a month last year. Smith couldn’t afford to pay insurance bills that were higher than her rent.”
• “Instead, Smith, who is healthy, bought a cheaper short-term medical plan that doesn’t cover pre-existing health conditions or mental health services, among other gaps. Smith is nervous that it won’t pay out if she needs something costly like a hospital stay. She is also worried about her son, who is uninsured. ‘I try not to think about it,’ she said. ‘Knock on wood, hope that he’s OK, I’m OK.’” [Wall Street Journal]

Pennsylvania

Arona East, Harrisburg

• “Through her work, a family plan would cost her $800 per pay period, and a state marketplace plan with a high deductible would cost about $650 a month, East said. ‘Right now, I’m not able to pay for the marketplace insurance because it’s just astronomical,’ East told the Pennsylvania Independent. ‘I’m in my 40s and going through perimenopause. I’m not able to go talk to someone about my symptoms or what’s going on because it’s all unaffordable.’” [Pennsylvania Independent]

John Ronca, Bethlehem

• “Pennsylvania bike shop owner John Ronca has been buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace for over a decade. Last year, with enhanced ACA tax credits enacted under the Biden administration, the premiums for his gold plan—the second-highest tier, which includes lower deductibles and often more flexibility in seeing specialists—tripled. Ronca decided to go for a bronze plan with a higher deductible to make sure he, his wife, and his young daughter were still insured. Now he’s putting off surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome because he can’t afford to pay for it in full. His family’s combined deductible is $14,000.”
• “‘I was really hoping to have that taken care of, but with the new deductible and the new plan, I’m pretty much pushing that off,’ Ronca told me, ‘and owning the bike shop, my hands are my money makers. […]. ‘Now you’ve got a ballroom coming, we’re in a war that’s billions of dollars,’ Ronca said, ‘but no one talks about what we need—healthcare.’” [Mother Jones]

Texas

Ernestine Hayward, 61

• “‘I’ve got 37 cents in my account right now,’ Hayward said. Living on a fixed income, she said, nearly every dollar goes toward rent, food, and medical care — often forcing impossible decisions. ‘Am I going to have food? Am I going to have money to get to my appointments?’ she said. Hayward has sold personal belongings, including furniture, electronics and sentimental items, to cover out-of-pocket medical costs.” [KSAT]

Wisconsin

Jason Endres, 51, Eau Claire

• “Endres told the Wisconsin Independent that he and his wife of nearly 30 years, who is also disabled, rely on Medicaid, as well as on Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare. They receive at-home help for tasks like getting out of bed, showering, getting dressed, cleaning their house and making meals.”
• “Endres said he is worried that changes to federal law will cut back the services he can afford. He also said he’s disappointed with Trump and U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents Eau Claire in Congress. ‘They kind of held us like they didn’t care about what we are as disabled people,’ Endres said.” [Wisconsin Independent]