Leslie Elder participates in the 2010 Race for the Cure. She was diagnosed with cancer four separate times.
Courtesy Leslie Elders
The Elder family tragedy —
Elder, her husband, Jim, and daughter Jacquelyn in the Virgin Islands.
Courtesy Elders Family
The Elder family tragedy —
Elder and daughter Jacquelyn in 2005. If her mother had had health insurance, Jacquelyn Elder believes she would not have died.
Courtesy Elders Family
The Elder family tragedy —
The Elders in Chicago in 2005. Elder's family spent her final months fighting for Medicaid, with no clue that they qualified for Florida's high-risk pool.
Courtesy Elders Family
The Elder family tragedy —
Leslie and Jim Elder. He says the Affordable Care Act has "just confused everybody. It certainly confused us."
Courtesy Elders Family
The Elder family tragedy —
Elder said that being diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2005 while uninsured was "the most honest feeling of powerlessness."
Courtesy Elders Family
The Elder family tragedy —
Insurance companies "are choosing who will live and who will die," Elder said in 2009.
Courtesy Elders Family
The Elder family tragedy —
Elder celebrates the new year in 2009. Just before she died in July, she wrote a friend, "I honestly don't know how much more I can endure."
