‘Hoops & Hurdles’ of the for-profit health insurance industry with Bri Moss

This is a personal story from CCI member Bri Moss, Dubuque IA, shared with us as part of the Hoops & Hurdles campaign to call out for-profit health insurers. Share your story and learn more about the campaign here.

I was diagnosed with type one diabetes at age 12. Our country’s healthcare insurance system isn’t supposed to discriminate, but I learned quickly that one’s income determines their quality of care.  As I grew older, I also grew familiar with the guilt and shame connected to being a Medicaid recipient. 

Navigating my way through health insurance barriers is like playing a game — except the winner is always the insurance company and I am definitely not having any fun. My doctor and I play by the rules, but the opposing team invented the rules themselves. Hoops and hurdles for us, free reign and big profit for them. 

As a 12-year-old with type one diabetes, I quickly became burned out taking 4+ injections each day and pricking my fingers even more frequently. My endocrinologist and I decided that an insulin pump would be beneficial for me. So we took our turn and rolled the dice. But the dice are rigged– only resulting in more hoops and hurdles, more chutes and ladders, more obstacles and barriers. 

My only game plan is to outlast, out-tire the insurance company. My doctor and I spent the better part of a year arguing, filing paperwork, fighting, hoping for either a change of luck or for our opponent to surrender. And as the two decades since my diagnosis creep and fly by simultaneously, I am still stuck in this twisted, rigged game with my literal life depending on the outcome. Victories are hard-fought and short-lived, I win one battle only to be confronted with another by the time it’s my turn to roll the dice again. 

“Are you sure you’re really a type on diabetic?” my insurance company asks, 15+ years after I was diagnosed. 

“Do you actually need that Humalog you’ve been using since 2001?”

“Are you positive that you can’t use your insulin pump without the supplies that go with it?”

It all sounds like, “You don’t pay us enough money to care that much about you.” Like we aren’t worth enough to these corporations making billions by denying us care. 

It becomes more apparent every day that our healthcare insurance system is rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthy few. 

I am ready to flip this board game off the table. I will strew the game pieces across the room to be stomped on. I am throwing those rigged dice out the second-story window. My cats will shred up the cards.Healthcare is NOT a game! Our lives are not to be gambled and toyed with. Patients and doctors should be calling the shots. Change to this system is essential, it’s up to us, and time is running out.