The complicated, frustrating world of ‘co-pay accumulators’ [Video]

SALT LAKE CITY — CrossFit is not for the faint of heart. Former runner Vince Massa would know.

For Massa, life has been a marathon — not so much a sprint like his high-intensity workouts.

He’s been living with Crohn’s disease since 1996.

“It was very sudden and very severe,” Massa said. “By the time they diagnosed it, I had lost 40 pounds in a matter of a couple of weeks. I was hospitalized, and I had my first bowel resection shortly after that.”

Crohn’s is a chronic bowel disease that inflames the lining of the digestive tract. It can be life-threatening if not treated properly.

“For whatever reason, whatever medication they put me on, I would either have really bad side effects or it just was ineffective, so I started burning through the list of options very quickly,” Massa said.

For a while, he was taking an injectable priced at $16,000, a shot that had to be …