This is a guest opinion column
It was 2015. I had just started my medical residency at UAB when I met a patient I will never forget. Carrie was a 20-year-old woman with Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune condition that causes inflammation in the intestines. Her inflammation was so bad that she needed part of her large intestine removed. She was working at a fast-food restaurant, saving up to attend nursing school. While hospitalized, she lost her job.
“How did her Crohn’s get so bad?” I wondered. Many people thrive with Crohn’s disease thanks to treatment advances. That’s when I realized that she had lost her pediatric Medicaid coverage at age 19 and therefore, had lost access to health care. Carrie would not be the last young adult with a chronic healthcare condition I’d meet whose life would be greatly altered by insurance loss…