Single Mom Battles Against Massive Medical Debts and Keeping Her Family Afloat After Fighting Cancer

Jeni Rae Peters, a single mom and a mental health counselor, was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. Before getting cancer, she adopted two girls and was fostering four other children. While battling cancer, she vowed she would not force her kids to find another parent.

She underwent multiple surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy to control her cancer. She beat cancer, but it left her with a staggering $30,000 medical bill, threats from bill collectors, and endless anxious nights thinking about her kids' future.

Per NPR, cancer kills around 600,000 people in the U.S. annually, making it the number one leading cause of death. Although many people survive it, thanks to breakthroughs in medicines and therapies, the treatment comes with very high costs that have left millions of families with a substantial medical debt that forced them to sacrifice their homes, education, and even cancer treatments to cut spending.

The toll on the family

Peters was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 2020. 

After her diagnosis, surgeons removed her breasts and had an intravenous port inserted into her chest. Her ovaries also showed she was at risk of ovarian cancer. Cancer treatment can exhaust patients physically and emotionally. However, Peters admitted that the much harder struggle was the perplexing medical bills.

Despite having insurance, the bills were from anesthesiologists who attended her surgeries, from the hospital and the surgery center. In April, she got a call from a bill collector that she owed them $13,000. She estimated that her medical debts would be more than $30,000.

Within weeks of diagnosis, she received bills, and the collectors started calling. One call came as she was lying in the recovery room after her double mastectomy. She was kind of delirious and took the call as she thought it was one of her kids. It turned out it was someone asking her to pay her medical bill. This year, she had more surgeries and bills. She admitted she does not know how much she owes anymore. She said that she feels like people send her random bills and does not even know what they are for.

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Tougher battle than cancer

In the U.S., one in five adults with cancer or a family member with cancer owes $10,000 or more medical debts. According to a KFF poll, most families who owe these large sums do not expect to pay it off.

Two-thirds of these adults with health care debt cut their family's spending on food, clothing, or other household basics. One in four declare bankruptcy or have lost their homes to eviction and foreclosure. Oncologists say that cancer patients who declared bankruptcy were more likely to die than those who did not. Doctors called it "financial toxicity."

About four in ten cancer patients with debt have taken money out of retirement, college, or long-term savings account. Three out of ten moved in with family or friends or had to change their living situation, as per a study published in Journal of Clinical Oncology. Some would end up living in a car or abandoning their treatments so they would not have to spend more on medical debts.

Peters admitted she didn't know what would happen to her family. Also, she worries endlessly about how she would be able to shoulder more bills if her cancer reappears. 

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