Struggling with Medical Costs for My Wife

Hello. I will try to keep my story short. It starts with the Affordable Care Act; until April of 2023, my family's medical needs were covered by the expanded Medicaid feature of the ACA, and it was great. My wife (who is a diabetic, and blind) was hospitalized for three weeks and spent another two weeks in a rehab facility, followed by six months of home nursing care. Not one bill! It was wonderful. But then my state revisited our situation, and we had to get medical insurance.

Which is when my life started to get interesting. I chose the lowest cost insurance option, and the monthly charge was about 10% of my income. But as it happens, the ACA requires insurance companies to cover patients with preexisting conditions, but it doesn't specify how much to cover preexisting conditions. My insurance plan covers the bare minimum of my wife's needs, so the out-of-pocket costs are actually more than I pay for insurance. I am now paying about 25% of my income for medical needs. On average; sometimes it is more.

So things got tough, but we carried on. I ran into some trouble with my car; I am a courier so I have to keep my car working and repairs to make my car pass the emissions test ran into the thousands. I maxed out one credit card. A couple other things went wrong with the car costing me a couple thousand more; I am about halfway maxed on a second credit card. But still, I was carrying on; "Hanging on in quiet desperation," as the old Pink Floyd song goes. I am behind on medical bills and have about $8000 in credit card debt.

But then, as I found myself on the brink of disaster, my wife got sick. She developed a persistent and nasty cough. I bought some sugar free cough drops, which did not help. I bought some diabetic cough syrup and Dayquil; again, not helping at all. I could not afford to take her to the hospital, but I could not afford not to. They said she doesn't have pneumonia, but she does have a "lesion" on her thyroid and another in her lung. The ER doctor strongly advised us to follow up with our regular doctor and a specialist in pulmonology, because it is possible these lesions are cancerous.

I'm a nice guy. I don't hurt anybody. I don't drink or do drugs and haven't for over a decade, not because I am morally pure or anything but because my 63 year old body can't take it. My wife has questionable taste in music but apart from that, she's harmless too. In a better world it wouldn't cost a ton of money to get medical care, but this is the world I am living in.

If someone can help I would appreciate it, and again, the only reason I am asking is this new possibly cancerous development in my wife's life. Thank you.