![\"Rebecca](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/260629-rebecca-anger-graduation-vl-247p-563458.jpg\")
Rebecca, surrounded by her siblings, graduated from the University of Missouri in 2007.Courtesy Rebecca Anger<\/p>\nRebecca was born just a few years after the Reagan administration created Medicaid home- and community-based services programs to help disabled people thrive outside institutions. She became paralyzed a couple of years after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law, extending civil rights protections to millions. And as she entered high school, the Supreme Court\u2019s 1999 Olmstead decision affirmed that disabled people had a right to live in their communities rather than being locked away in facilities.<\/p>\n
Rebecca, a straight-A student, was determined to hold them to it.<\/p>\n
In the fall of 2003, Rebecca\u2019s parents packed up the family\u2019s van and drove her nearly 400 miles to the University of Missouri.<\/p>\n
She had rejected a school much closer to home after learning that it housed all its disabled students in a single dormitory. At Missouri, she would stay in a regular dorm, relying on an Illinois program that allowed her to pay other college students to help her eat, bathe and get through the day.<\/p>\n
Minutes after dropping her off, Matt and Christie pulled over and debated turning around. \u201cThis was either going to be the most stupid thing we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d Christie recalls thinking, \u201cor the most fantastic thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Challenges emerged almost immediately. One student caregiver quit right away. A second caregiver she considered a friend stole $5,000 from her, secretly using her debit card for months to buy food and furniture. Another didn\u2019t show up one morning, leaving Rebecca stuck in bed, unable to eat, drink or use the bathroom for hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re relying on your parents, you pretty much know you\u2019re going to be getting up every day,\u201d Rebecca said. \u201cBut when you\u2019re in your own home and you don\u2019t have family living with you, you\u2019re relying on somebody else showing up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, she made it work.<\/p>\n
Rebecca, surrounded by her siblings, graduated from the University of Missouri in 2007.Courtesy Rebecca Anger<\/p>\n
She studied visual arts, learning to make pencil drawings with an adaptive device she held in her mouth. She graduated, moved back to the Chicago area and started her own graphic design business.<\/p>\n
But the same Medicaid programs that made that life possible also imposed limits. Rebecca struggled to find reliable aides in an industry plagued by chronic worker shortages and high turnover. She advertised on Craigslist. Some caregivers lasted a day, others a few months. A few, like O\u2019Connor, stayed for years.<\/p>\n
The financial constraints brought their own challenges. To keep her Medicaid funding, Illinois limited Rebecca to no more than $17,500 in assets. There was no income cap, but she could never save. No squirreling away money for a down payment. No retirement account.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as you remain poor,\u201d she said, \u201cyou can work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca wanted more.<\/p>\n
She enrolled at Loyola University\u2019s law school, graduated in 2015 with $230,000 in student loan debt and spent years struggling to pass the bar. It was a battle getting the testing authority to approve her requests for extra time needed to type out essay responses one letter at a time. <\/p>\n
Finally, she passed.<\/p>\n
While grinding through law school, she had begun dating Greg, a former wheelchair basketball player with an easy smile. The two had been Facebook friends for years before meeting in person. Four months later, they were engaged.<\/p>\n
![\"Greg,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/260629-rebecca-greg-anger-vl-1148a-73ab0d.jpg\")
To build their life together, Rebecca and Greg have had to navigate many difficult obstacles.Courtesy Rebecca Anger<\/p>\n
Before making it official, however, they had to consult a lawyer to make sure Greg\u2019s savings wouldn\u2019t push Rebecca over Medicaid\u2019s asset limit \u2014 as routine a step for disabled couples as picking a dress or debating seating charts.<\/p>\n
They wed in 2016, bought the condo near Wrigley with help from family and later went to work at Chicago Volunteer Legal Services \u2014 he as a paralegal, she as a supervising attorney.<\/p>\n
Piece by piece, she built her version of the future her parents had imagined.<\/p>\n
After breakfast, O\u2019Connor cleared the dishes and prepared to leave for her primary job teaching at a preschool. Rebecca and Greg shifted into work mode.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ready to go?\u201d Greg asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d he said, backing away from the table. \u201cLet\u2019s commute.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope there\u2019s no traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n
They laughed, side by side in their wheelchairs, then headed for their home office down the hall.<\/p>\n
Pearl Jam played from a speaker \u2014 they share an affinity for \u201990s grunge \u2014 as they settled in front of their screens. The walls were crowded with Milwaukee Bucks posters, \u201cSeinfeld\u201d memorabilia, photographs from trips to New York and Cleveland, and snapshots with longtime caregivers who had become like family.<\/p>\n
In a couple of hours, another one of them would be coming to feed Rebecca lunch.<\/p>\n
Navigating a mouse with her left hand and using a mouthstick \u2014 a device that allows her to tap a keyboard with a stylus held between her teeth \u2014 Rebecca worked her way through a mountain of client emails. A typical Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rebecca was born just a few years after the Reagan administration created Medicaid home- and community-based services programs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-734659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}