Oh it is mind boggling. I had started displaying classic IBD symptoms my sophomore year of college. I was in nursing school and had a pretty strong suspicion it was Crohns or UC but literally could of afford to be diagnosed. I was a college student with a part time job but my mom had bad insurance. When I first went to the doctor I was told that I would need have my stool sampled to rule out Cdiff and since it wouldn't be covered by my insurance it would be well over $1000. I noped the fuck out of there and was told to keep a food diary and stay hydrated.

I wasn't able to afford diagnostic testing until about five months after graduation when I had gotten a job and the insurance had kicked in. My PCP had put me on prednisone for the symptoms but by that point my mouth was full of ulcers, I was going to the bathroom up to a dozen times a day, and was so thin my periods were almost nonexistent. When I was finally able to be seen by a GI specialist for an appointment and I was such a mess he told me to call off of work the next day because I had been scheduled for a colonoscopy.

It ended up being ileo-colitis Crohns along with some strictures and a fistula. I am now thankfully on remicade infusions and imuran and am doing much better, but the strictures and scar tissue still cause issues to this day and put me at risk for obstruction in the future. It makes me kind of bitter knowing how I had years of inflammation causing damage just because I couldn't afford the testing.

And working as a nurse now I see so many patients come in sick as hell because they themselves know they couldn't afford treatment for anything short of an emergency. The system definitely needs to be fixed, but I have no idea how.