In the past week and a half, Cori Bush has been hospitalized twice with shortness of breath, pharyngitis , fatigue, loss of taste and a headache.

Told initially that she had pneumonia, she was sent home, only to return to the ER when her symptoms didn’t improve. A coronavirus test came back negative, but she was admitted anyway. She was discharged on Wednesday.

“I’m worried about the bill I’m getting to receive,” she said. “I drove myself to the ER , albeit I should have taken an ambulance, but I didn’t want that bill. And now the bill from the hospital stay, the bill from being admitted, and therefore the doctor’s bill, which is all separate.”

Ms. Bush, 43, doesn’t have insurance . She is additionally a candidate for Congress, trying for the second time to defeat Representative William Lacy Clay of Missouri, a 10-term incumbent, during a Democratic primary. She is one among several Democratic congressional candidates who gave up their employer-sponsored insurance once they decided to run office, and whose platforms include expanding access to health care.

The choice between keeping their own insurance or trying to assist others get such coverage wasn’t one they made lightly. Now, with the coronavirus outbreak putting electoral politics on pause across the country, they need to take extra care to guard their health as they fight to take care of momentum around their campaigns.

“It’s a difficult balance, and that i need to be real with you, it’s a touch scary, because i would like to be out there,” said Samelys López, 40, who is running during a crowded Democratic primary in New York’s 15th District and is seeking to succeed her former boss, Representative José E. Serrano, who is retiring.

“What if something does happen to me?” she said. “I need to be even more vigilant because I don’t have insurance at the instant . and that i think that's the rationale we'd like to form the case for universal health care. we should always have this stuff as a person's right — I shouldn’t have had to form that choice.”

Nabilah Islam, one among several Democrats running to exchange Representative Rob Woodall, a retiring Republican, during a district north of Atlanta, has not had insurance since 2018.

“It was something that I forwent because running for office is cost-prohibitive, and it’s expensive to buy health care,” she said. “I can’t even qualify for Medicaid, albeit I wanted to.”

Georgia is one among 14 states that haven't expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and Ms. Islam is one among quite 100,000 people in her district who are uninsured.

“God forbid I do get the virus,” Ms. Islam, 30, said. “I would enter medical debt, and that’s not just me, that’s over 20 percent of my district.”

As expensive because it are often to run office, candidates without insurance face even greater financial risks, since an unexpected ambulance ride or ER visit could put them thousands of dollars in debt.

Ms. Islam lost her insurance in 2018, when she left her job because the Southern states finance director at the Democratic National Committee. She bought a flimsy off-market plan subsequent year, while she was working with local campaigns in Georgia. But now that she’s running herself, she has no protections in the least .

“When you run office, you can’t do that part time. The deck is stacked against you if you are doing it part-time,” she said. “And if you're a wealthier person, you've got the benefits of not really having to stress about insurance . You’re ready to run more freely.”

The prospect of going without insurance , pandemic or not, can deter people from running for office, particularly those that are political outsiders.

“It’s one among these additional barriers for candidates who are labor ,” said Hannah Nayowith, who served as campaign manager for Jessica Cisneros, who narrowly lost a primary race last month to unseat Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas.

Ms. Cisneros ran a grass-roots campaign while uninsured, albeit she provided insurance for her full-time staff. there have been times she had to cross the border into Mexico for procedures and drugs , because they were cheaper there.

Ms. Nayowith noted that the Democratic Party has often involved greater representation by candidates of color and working-class people. But many of these people are less likely to possess insurance .

“For folks that appear as if the type of candidates that we would like during this new era of politics,” she said, “it makes it even harder for them to try to to it.”

“The system wasn’t designed to elect people like me: working people, women of color,” Ms. Islam said. “And one among those structural barriers is health care.”

When Ms. Bush decided to run a second time, it had been hard for her to go away her job as a nurse during a community health clinic, particularly because she may be a single parent of two children. In fact, she had planned to stay working until her campaign got off the bottom .

“I was getting to work for several months then begin later within the race. It just didn’t find yourself happening that way,” she said. “It’s hard to stay employment or find employment when you’re running against a Democratic incumbent.”

She is doing her best to stay her campaign going while she recovers from pneumonia, staying present on social media until she feels healthy enough to become more active.

“We structured our campaign to where it continues to roll even when I’m sick,” Ms. Bush said. “We are going to be ready to make it day by day. But once I’m back, I’m back.”

Ms. López, who was once homeless herself, left her job at a nonprofit group that builds housing for the homeless so as to run.

She mulled the choice for months, and therefore the prospect of losing her insurance and her income was one reason it took goodbye to form up her mind. She had some savings, enabling her to require the leap, but she said that cash would run out soon.

Right now, she said, her focus is on helping people in her Bronx district, where many of us sleep in poverty and which has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus. As her entire campaign operation moved online, she began using her network of volunteers not only to phone and text bank but also to undertake to urge resources and supplies to those that needed them.

She’s currently staying isolated, since she knows her health is directly associated with the well-being of her campaign.

“I desire I’m being penalized,” Ms. López said. “Just because we make a choice to be publicly service and provides back, doesn’t mean that we should always be choosing between life, death and illness.”

Candidates who don’t have health care are often unable to supply insurance to their employees also , leaving multiple layers of their campaigns vulnerable during an epidemic .

“We aren’t ready to raise the funds to be ready to be ready to pay a salary and have insurance ,” Ms. Bush said. “It was something that we actually wanted to be ready to do.”

Isra Allison, Ms. Bush’s campaign manager, has worked for a string of grass-roots campaigns and, as a result, hasn’t had insurance in four years.

“Having access to universal health care will give people more of the chance to connect to a grass-roots campaign if it’s something that they’re hooked in to ,” she said.

Ms. Islam petitioned the Federal committee in early January to be ready to use campaign funds to buy insurance , seeking to level the playing field for candidates like her.

“I believe that if you’re on the campaign trail, you ought to be ready to have health care,” Ms. Islam said. “Especially during an epidemic .”

She said she still hadn’t heard back.