A Minneapolis Barber Couldn’t Afford His Family’s Prescriptions After His Insurance Changed — What He Discovered at the Pharmacy Counter

Have you ever stood in a pharmacy line, doing the math in your head, wondering whether you could actually afford to walk out with what the doctor ordered? For most people, that moment passes. For others, it becomes the defining question of a season of their life.

I met Franklin Yarbrough on a Tuesday afternoon in early February 2026, in the prescription pickup line at a CVS on Lake Street in Minneapolis. I overheard him quietly asking the pharmacist about patient assistance programs — the kind of hushed, slightly embarrassed conversation that stops when a stranger gets too close. I introduced myself, handed him my card, and asked if he’d be willing to talk. He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Yeah, actually. Maybe somebody should hear this.”

A Small Business Owner on the Edge

Franklin Yarbrough is 35, a licensed barber who owns a single-chair shop in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. He’s been cutting hair professionally since he was 22, opened his own place at 28, and built a steady clientele through word of mouth and sheer consistency. He and his wife have three children — ages 4, 7, and 9. His wife stays home full-time to care for them.

On paper, Franklin is exactly the kind of self-made small business owner that politicians love to celebrate in speeches. In practice, he told me, the margins are razor thin. “I gross maybe $58,000 in a good year,” he said, sitting across from me at a diner near his shop two days after we first crossed paths. “After supplies, rent on the space, and whatever I have to put aside for taxes, we’re living on something closer to $38,000. With five people.”

The mortgage is a weight Franklin carries visibly. He bought his home in 2022, during what he described as a brief window when he thought business was going to keep growing. The payment is $2,100 a month — steep for a family at his income level, and something he acknowledged with a short, dry laugh. “I was feeling optimistic. I thought I’d add another chair, maybe hire someone part-time. That didn’t happen the way I planned.”

When the Insurance Plan Changed Everything

Franklin had been covering his family through a marketplace plan under the Affordable Care Act. In October 2025, his insurer restructured its Minnesota offerings, and his plan was discontinued. The replacement plan carried a premium increase of roughly $340 per month and came with a higher deductible — $6,500 per person, up from $3,200. For a family with three kids, one of whom has a recurring respiratory condition requiring a daily inhaler, the math collapsed almost immediately.

“The inhaler alone was $187 a month out of pocket until we hit the deductible,” Franklin told me. “And we were nowhere near hitting it. So that $187 was just gone every month, plus whatever else came up.” He paused and looked at his coffee. “I started splitting doses. I know you’re not supposed to do that. But I did it.”

It was at that point — rationing a child’s medication — that Franklin began seriously looking at other options. He’d always assumed Medicaid was for people who were unemployed, or much poorer than he was. He had a business, a home, a work ethic. The word “Medicaid” didn’t feel like it applied to him. That assumption, he would later find out, was costing his family real money.

The Pharmacy Counter Conversation That Opened a Door

By February, Franklin had fallen two months behind on the prescription co-pays for his youngest child’s inhaler and was managing an increasingly complicated juggling act between his mortgage, utilities, and the family’s basic medical needs. He started researching side hustles — weekend delivery driving, selling custom fade tutorials online — but hadn’t yet connected any of that momentum to the possibility of government assistance.

“I don’t really think of myself as somebody who needs help,” he told me plainly. “That’s probably a pride thing, but it’s also just how I was raised. You figure it out. You find another angle.” That restlessness is evident in the way Franklin talks — he’s always scanning for the next solution, the next move. But some problems, he was learning, don’t yield to hustle alone.

The pharmacist at the CVS on Lake Street was the one who first mentioned Minnesota’s Medical Assistance program by name. She told him his income might put his children — if not his whole household — within eligibility range. She gave him a printout with a QR code linking to the state’s MNsure portal. That was the same afternoon I encountered him.

Navigating the Application: What Franklin Actually Went Through

When I followed up with Franklin a month later, in early March, he had begun the Medical Assistance application through MNsure, Minnesota’s state health insurance marketplace. The process was not frictionless. He described it as “a lot of uploading documents I had to dig for” — including his 2024 tax return, proof of business income, and documentation showing his household size.

The application required him to report his gross business revenue alongside his business expenses, which meant self-employment income was calculated as net — a detail that significantly affected his eligibility. His county caseworker walked him through that distinction during a phone appointment. “She was actually really helpful,” Franklin said. “I thought they’d just deny me and move on. She spent like 45 minutes on the phone going through every line.”

The outcome was more favorable than Franklin had expected. His three children were approved for full Medical Assistance, with no monthly premium and a $3 copay on most prescriptions. He and his wife were determined eligible for MinnesotaCare — a separate state program for adults who earn too much for Medicaid but can’t afford marketplace plans — at a combined premium of approximately $62 per month.

What Remains Unresolved — and What Franklin Is Still Figuring Out

Healthcare coverage was one piece. The mortgage is another matter entirely. Franklin was candid with me about the fact that coverage for prescriptions doesn’t solve the structural pressure of a $2,100 monthly payment on a $38,000 net income. He’s current on the mortgage — barely — and has been cycling through ideas for supplemental income with the focused urgency of someone who can see a problem coming before it arrives.

“I’ve been doing Sunday shifts at a barbershop in St. Paul,” he told me. “Owner there is older, he lets me rent the chair. Adds maybe $600 a month if it’s a good month. I’m also trying to get a YouTube thing going — tutorials, fade techniques. It hasn’t made money yet but I’m putting the videos out.” He didn’t romanticize any of it. These were contingency plans, not solutions.

When I asked Franklin what he wished he’d known sooner, he didn’t hesitate. “That these programs exist for people who are working,” he said. “I always thought you had to be broke-broke to qualify. Like, unemployed, no assets. But they look at income. And my income, after expenses, is low. I just didn’t know to look.”

That gap — between what people assume about Medicaid eligibility and what the actual income thresholds allow — is one that KFF health policy research has documented repeatedly. Millions of Americans who qualify for Medicaid or CHIP do not enroll, often because they believe they earn too much or that the program isn’t meant for people who are employed.

I thought about that number as I drove away from our last conversation. Franklin Yarbrough is not a cautionary tale — he’s running a business, raising three kids, and working Sundays in another city to keep his family stable. But the months he spent rationing his son’s inhaler because he didn’t know the income thresholds exist — that time doesn’t come back. Those doses don’t come back.

“I feel like I should’ve known,” he told me at the end of our last meeting. “But also — why would I? Nobody told me. The pharmacist told me. That’s a pharmacist’s job.” He shook his head, almost smiling. “I’m grateful. But I’m also a little pissed off that I had to find out by accident.”

Franklin’s coverage is in place now. His kids are covered. The mortgage pressure hasn’t lifted, and the YouTube channel is still in the red. But when I think about what changed between October 2025 and March 2026 for this family, it’s not a rescue story — it’s the story of a system that works, when someone happens to be standing in the right pharmacy line at the right time.

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