An Arm and a Leg is a podcast about why health care costs so freaking much and what we can (maybe) do about it.
If you’ve ever been surprised by a medical bill, you’re in good company. But as our team of seasoned journalists has learned from years of reporting — you’re not always helpless. We don’t have all the answers, but we’ll offer you tools and big picture insights with plenty of humor and heart.
An Arm and a Leg is co-produced with KFF Health News and distributed in partnership with KUOW.
You can support An Arm and a Leg by donating at armandalegshow.com/support/
Show Credits: Created, hosted, and produced by Dan Weissmann with senior producer Emily Pisacreta and engagement producer Claire Davenport, edited by Ellen Weiss. Audio wizard: Adam Raymonda. Music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations. Lynne Johnson is our operations manager.
An Arm and a Leg wraps up a big year, and some of the team takes a moment to reflect. Consulting Managing Producer Daisy Rosario, Editor Marian Wang, and Associate Producer Emily Pisacreta join host Dan Weissmann in a conversation on why we make the show and what we look forward to doing in 2022. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Who’s making a buck: rapid test edition. Rapid, at-home COVID tests are pretty much essential if you want to see friends and family this holiday season, and stay safe. But they’re freaking expensive and can be hard to find. What the heck happened? When ProPublica reporter Eric Umansky went looking for COVID tests recently, he came back empty handed. He and fellow reporter Lydia DePillis investigated, tracing the US’s rapid testing problem all the way back to the FDA and other government agencies...
Health insurance is like some medieval horror, says law professor Jackie Fox. But, funny thing: She also says insurance fights are easy. For her. She’s been helping people win them for 30 years. Jackie Fox has a lot to teach us. And class is in session. Here’s a transcript of the episode . Send your stories and questions : https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 ARM-N-LEG And of course we’d love for you to support this show . This month, every dollar you donate is DOUBLED, thanks to News...
We kick off with a wild ride: How one journalist almost got roped into a scam. While hunting for a new insurance plan, Mitra Kaboli got an offer that seemed too good to be true—but seemed to be coming from her current insurer. Mitra was skeptical, and it turns out, she had every reason to be. Dania Palanker from Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms unpacks this sketchy scheme, and gives us the key to avoiding it: When you're searching for health insurance... skip Google. Se...
When Mattew Lientz needed surgery to save his life, his insurance wouldn’t cover it. Enter: Laurie Todd, the Insurance Warrior. Her first task: Figuring out who Matthew was really fighting, and how big the battle really was. Together, Matthew, his wife Diane, and Laurie made the case for Matthew’s life. Fourteen years later, the speeches they gave in a conference room full of insurance executives are a masterclass in winning insurance appeals — and living to tell the tale. The battle also illust...
In 2005, Laurie Todd needed surgery to save her life. Her insurance company had no intention of paying for it. She went to war, and won. She's been helping other do the same ever since. Now, she's sharing her secrets with us. Psst: This month, when you support this show , every dollar you donate is DOUBLED, thanks to NewsMatch and the Institute for Nonprofit News. Holy cow. Here's the link . Also: Here’s a transcript for the episode . Send your stories and questions : https://armandalegshow.com/...
Yup. A Stanford professor measured it. So… we should probably learn how they actually make money, understand their incentives. Here’s one clue: A lot of the time, providing insurance isn’t their real job. In this episode, we unpack what that means, and we start exploring how to put that knowledge to work. Here’s a transcript for this episode: https://armandalegshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/12-Million-Hours-An-Arm-and-a-Leg-Transcript-S6-Ep05-12.pdf Send your stories and questions: https://...
Hospitals in Maryland were suing patients over bills that should’ve been forgiven. It wasn’t illegal. Until now. How a coalition changed that. This year. Plus, our friends at Dollar For build their bill-crushing army, one Zoom training at a time. Need help applying for charity care for you or a loved one? We compiled a list of five helpful tips. Here's the transcript for this episode . Send your stories and questions : https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 ARM-N-LEG And of course we'd ...
Manny Lanza died because he didn't have insurance. His parents fought back, with help from New York’s favorite tabloid. After years of work by advocates and organizers, laws suddenly changed. Here’s how. Here's a transcript for this episode . Send your stories and questions : https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 ARM-N-LEG And of course we'd love for you to support this show . See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
How one Republican senator made sure the ACA required non-profit hospitals to act more like charities—and less like loan sharks—before voting against the whole thing. The national requirement to offer charity care emerged from the Obama White House’s failed courtship of GOP Senator Chuck Grassley. We hear how that failed courtship almost tanked the ACA— and how the battle over the ACA “broke America”—from former Obama adviser David Axelrod, longtime reporter Julie Rovner and a top Grassley aide....
The lawyer was Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, the lawyer who beat Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Later, he launched a series of ill-fated national lawsuits aimed at getting non-profit hospitals to quit price-gouging low-income patients, and chasing them hard for payment. It... didn't go as well as the tobacco lawsuit, by a long shot. Scruggs did help start something that ended up making real change. For instance: We’ve been following the work of Jared Walker, who went super-viral on TikTok, spreading the ...
We’ve been on a hiatus for a minute, and we are SO excited about what we’re coming back with. These are stories we’ve been collecting for months—some of them for more than a year—and they’re big. One of them turns out to be about how change actually happens. Which for a show about the cost of health care—one that promises (and we do) to be entertaining, empowering, and useful—change is important. And, as horrible as things are right now, we’ve been learning: some things used to be worse. For ins...
An update on Jared Walker, whose viral TikTok described a little-known (and effective) method to “crush” many hospital bills, and offered to help folks deploy it. Since then, he's been responding to thousands of requests for help—and building a system to respond more effectively, thanks to a small army of whip-smart volunteers. Jared’s non-profit, Dollar For , has got that system up and running. So: If anyone you know has a hospital bill they can’t pay, the system can quickly tell them if they m...
For years, at ProPublica, Marshall Allen has been exposing health care grifters. (He’s our kind of guy.) Now, he's written a book … about how to fight back. It’s called “Never Pay the First Bill.” We talked—about some of his best tips, about how you can’t win ‘em all, and about why it’s worth learning all you can and giving it your best shot. Marshall compares the U.S. health-care "system" to the bully he faced in 7th grade. Big, stupid, mean. And SOMETIMES—as he learned in junior high--you can ...
Health care insiders get stupid medical bills too. One of them taught us how to write an insurance appeal—like the one that saved her son $14,000. You can read that letter—and her notes to us about why she chose to include certain words and key facts—right here: https://armandalegshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Appeal_letter_2020_redacted_with_comments.pdf We met Jeannine after our host addressed a conference of “industry insiders.” It wasn’t much fun. But this makes it all worthwhile. Links...
When Adam Woodrum's insurance denied a claim for an ER bill, he sent his story to NPR... because he happened to KNOW how to deal with it. And he figured it would be a friendly thing to share what he knew. (Kudos, Adam!) This story was originally reported by Julie Appleby for our pals at Kaiser Health News, and KHN editor-in-chief Elisabeth Rosenthal weighs in at the end. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
How hard is it to pick the best health insurance? ECONOMISTS find it hard. Including one who has studied the question, "How hard can it be to pick a decent insurance plan?" Lots of people are suddenly eligible to pick possibly-cheaper health insurance thanks to the American Rescue Plan—the big stimulus bill Congress passed in March—so we thought it could be useful to bring this 2018 story back. Also useful: This essay from health-care reporter Zachary Tracer about how he picked his health insura...
... and it's gonna take us a little while to get it ready for you— maybe a couple months. Meanwhile, we'll have little updates for you here and there. ... and it's a great time to sign up for our newsletter, where we'll have details on what's next, and stories we think you'll be interested in. Here's where to go: https://armandalegshow.com/newsletter/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
With COVID vaccinations ramping up, it's time to check in: Who's been trying to make a buck? And who's been doing their best to serve the folks who need help the most? In Philadelphia, the good, the bad, and the ugly have all been on vivid display. The Bad comes with a giant serving of chutzpah: For a while, the city put its mass-vaccination program in the hands of a 22 year-old with no experience in health care, but with a healthy interest in making money. It did NOT go well. (You may have seen...
We're re-releasing and updating a story we first reported in 2019, about how insulin got to be so horribly expensive—the scientists who discovered it did NOT want price or profits to keep it away from people who need it—and what some people are doing about it, today. The story seems especially relevant right now, for two reasons: the COVID vaccine process has reminded all of us how vital it is to BOTH get breakthroughs in the lab AND to make sure everyone can afford to benefit from them. The sec...
Yep. This viral TikTok video 's recipe for "crushing" medical bills is legally sound. And IRS filings from thousands of hospitals attest to $2.7 billion of crush-able debt from a single year — a number that experts say looks more like a floor than a ceiling. Of course, it'll take a lot of work to actually zap those debts. But Jared Walker is off to a promising start. His organization, Dollar For , had already helped wipe out millions in medical bills before he made that video. See omnystudio.com...
Jeff is a lawyer who used to represent medical-bill collectors in court. ("I was a bad guy, for sure," he says.) But he switched sides, and he's here to tell us what he knows. For instance, we have more rights than we probably know. It can be tough to get them enforced, but he's got some tips there too. And his portait of how the dark machinery works is... kind of hilarious. Here's a transcript for this episode . Send your stories and questions : https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 A...
2021 is off to a rough start, but we've got a couple of small things that don't completely suck. First, a new federal rule could help cut through one completely-ridiculous issue . Then, a listener describes how he headed off an insurance nightmare, using what he learned from this show. Dan talked about the first story—a requirement that hospitals give us some information upfront about what a given service might cost us (after insurance, if we've got it)—in a short conversation with Niala Boodhoo...
Former health-care executive Wendell Potter spent part of 2020 publishing high-profile apologies for the lies he says he told the American people in his old job—and trying to debunk the myths he once sold. The story of how he became a whistle-blower is a modern-day Christmas Carol . And it's a story about the long, messy process of change—whether that’s changing your own life or trying to change a bigger system. It’s a great way to close out a pretty-terrible year. Another cheerful note: THANK Y...
This episode turns the tables: Host Dan Weissmann gets interviewed about what he's learned this year, and what's ahead for the show— with T.K. Dutes , an ace radio host and podcast-maker ... who was a nurse in a previous life, so she knows a thing or two about the health-care system. (She chronicled her career transition in an episode of NPR's Life Kit .) And here we learn: During her nursing career, she was uninsured. She's got some stories about life before-and-after health insurance. T.K. als...
Keeping the plan we've got means paying $200 a month more. But... would a "cheaper" plan cost us more in the long run? It depends! And COVID makes it a lot more complicated. This stinks. You can hear my wife and me try to puzzle the whole thing out, and then I debrief with an expert. Who leaves me reminded how lucky we are to have the options we do. HEALTH INSURANCE SUCKS. But the alternative is so much worse. If you want to go deeper on health insurance, you might want to check these episodes f...
Andy Slavitt, who ran a big chunk of health care for the Obama administration, has spent 2020 talking with almost everybody who knows anything about the COVID pandemic— and sharing what he learns in real time, first on Twitter, then on his pandemic podcast "In the Bubble." When we wanted an episode taking a look at the big picture—what we've learned so far from the pandemic and what we might expect next—Andy was the person we wanted to talk to. And he said yes! We got into the money side of what...
They're supposed to be free. And usually they are. But sometimes... things happen. Here's how to keep them from happening to YOU. New York Times reporter Sarah Kliff has been asking readers to send in their COVID-testing bills. She's now seen hundreds of them, and she runs down for us the most common ways things can go sideways, and how to avoid them. Here's Sarah's NYT story that inspired this episode . Support us : During November and December 2020, your donation counts for DOUBLE , thanks to ...
Possibly our most-useful episode ever. A listener asked: How do I remain cool when calling insurance companies? We called a veteran self-defense teacher— because self-defense means a lot more than hitting and kicking. It's about standing up for yourself in all kinds of difficult situations. Which means using your words. Lauren Taylor talks us through some of her top strategies, and how she used them this year in her own epic health-insurance fight. Send your stories and questions : https://arman...
In a classic—and hilarious—David vs. Goliath story, Jeffrey Fox takes on a huge hospital over an outrageous bill, and wins. He's a bit of an expert in using small claims court to get satisfaction, and he's got detailed instructions for all of us. Here's his first lesson: The other side—no matter how big they are, and no matter what they say to you—doesn't actually get to make the rules. Not the LEGAL rules. The details of how he got to victory in this case are super-entertaining, and super-satis...
