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Real People and Real Stories from the Health Care Crisis

Ellena Bennett
Albany, NY

Ellena Bennett is a 27-year-old doctoral student and three-time cancer survivor who lost both parents to cancer at a young age. She receives her health insurance under COBRA, which covers 60 percent of her medical care but leaves her responsible for the remaining 40 percent, which she must pay out-of-pocket. The combination of her prescription medication and out-of-network care costs around $2,500 to $3,000 per month.

Despite her circumstances, Ellena manages to be resourceful and seeks out local Institutional Review Boards to qualify for and participate in clinical trials, or to find trials for others who are struggling. “I spend at least 20 hours a week helping friends, or friends of friends, find a clinical trial or some way that they can gain some sort of access to health care.” She also works with various pharmaceutical companies to obtain drugs she needs that her insurance company will not cover. Ellena finds all of this totally deplorable.

“I am a graduate student who has to—despite fighting end-stage cancer—continue to go to school full-time to get the student loans to pay for the health care costs so I can continue to just live,” said Ellena. “And I don’t think that that’s acceptable at any level.”

She emphasized that younger health care consumers are often forgotten in the reform debate. “I think that this is a perpetual problem, and I think an age group that is continuously overlooked is this 25- to 35-year-old age group, students that are getting out of college who aren’t part of their parents’ health care, who want to work for not-for-profits,” said Ellena. “I mean, what are you gonna do? There’s nowhere to go.”

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