Part 1: Pushed to the brink — Utahns one diagnosis from disaster

Editor's note: This is the first of a five-part series.

Brush in hand with a canvas spread before him, artist Jeff Hein is living the creative, undictated life that his widely renowned talent has afforded him.

And he's terrified doing it.

The fear rises with him each morning, follows him to bed each night and sometimes haunts his dreams. He remembers all too vividly the $2 million his parents' health insurance paid out the year he came home early from his LDS mission after being diagnosed with cancer.

So despite the good things in his life — a healthy wife and children, lucrative commissions unhampered by the recession, and renown far beyond his celebrated biblical scenes — he is unsettled, uncertain and unfailingly frugal.

As a cancer survivor, he's virtually uninsurable on the open market. He's now part of the state's health insurance pool for high-risk people, which has an annual maximum payout of $300,000. But the $2 million memory hovers overhead.

So despite the fact that he saves "every penny" beyond living and business expenses, Hein knows, like millions of others nationwide, that he is one diagnosis away from bankruptcy, or possibly even homelessness.

He's living a life he never dreamed possible — both good and bad. While art lovers continue to seek him out, there is little respite from the threat of a cancer relapse. If that happens, his efforts to self-insure will likely be far too little and the bills far too big.

So when he hears people take shots at artists or other self-employed people who struggle to secure health insurance, he knows it's often bred of ignorance and/or the blessing of good health.

"The majority of people think we're a joke and we milk the system. It's quite the opposite. I feel I'm really contributing. I'm paying taxes and I have no (consumer) debt," other than a mortgage, which he plans to pay off within a decade.

The smugness that can come with good health on one hand, and the fear of catastrophic medical expenses on the other, has put large segments of Americans at odds over health-care reform. Many more millions are "in the middle," knowing there's no guarantee about which end of the spectrum they'll end up on.

One thing most can agree on is that health-care costs, either their own or those they pay for in premiums, can't continue to rise at the current rate without pushing them, and the nation itself, over a financial cliff.