First lady Michelle Obama hosted a group of women leaders in the East Room of the White House Friday in an event designed to highlight the plight of older women grappling with the inequities of the current health care system.

“Our entire lives as women,” Obama said, “we are asked to bear much of the responsibility for our family’s health and well-being, and yet we often face special challenges when it comes to our own health insurance.”

With the opulent gold drapes of the huge room as an elegant backdrop, three American women—all over age 50—told their stories of crippling drug prices and recalcitrant insurance companies reluctant to pay for vital treatments.

But if the stories were bleak, the mood was upbeat. The audience of 130, from activist groups of older Americans including AARP, was lively, sympathetic—applauding, groaning and laughing as the stories unfolded.

Kelly Bollinger of Oswego, N.Y., told the story of her husband’s heart attack and her daughter’s diagnosis of cancer that followed soon after. Disabled by his heart condition, he had to leave his job and lost his insurance. Bollinger was able to purchase health insurance through her job, but the premiums and copayments have literally driven the family into bankruptcy. “We did everything you are supposed to do” and yet when they needed the coverage most, it let them down. “We are working exclusively to pay medical bills,” she said, fighting back tears.

A former small-business owner from Bethesda, Md., Fran Garfinkle, 70, said she and her husband both receive Medicare and Social Security, but when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, the high cost of the medications she needed quickly put her in the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” coverage gap. She said three months’ supply of one of her medicines costs $1,100. “One single health setback and all you have, your savings, everything is at risk,” she said.

Judy Stein of Mansfield, Conn., was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago and had to fight with insurance companies to get coverage for the treatments she needed. As a lawyer and founder of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, she said she knew how to navigate the formidable system—but acknowledged others wouldn’t have been as successful. She said she pays $400,000 in insurance to cover herself and 30 employees in her nonprofit organization—she can’t get cheaper insurance because of her preexisting condition.

Obama matched the tone of her guests as she wove statistics of health care reform with her own personal stories as a mother and daughter, pointing out what the audience clearly knew already—that women are typically the caregivers both for their children and for their parents. She spoke with fondness of her own 72-year-old “extraordinary mother” who continues to help care for her family in the White House.

Obama said more than 10 percent of all women care for a sick or older relative. Women are more likely than men to work in jobs that don’t offer health insurance, and women who do have insurance pay more for the same coverage, adding that a third of all women have used up savings, taken on debt or given up necessities to pay medical bills.

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