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PODCAST

An Arm and a Leg

An Arm and a Leg

An Arm and a Legis 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

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

29:52

My Neighbor the Health-Care Ninja

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/11/21

Meredith Balogh has spent years learning to navigate the financial side of the health-care system. She’s a type-one diabetic, she’s never had a lot of money, and for years she didn’t have health insurance.It hasn’t been easy, but she’s become a master.“There's only three things that you're fighting,” she says. “Problems with competence, problems with greed and problems with maliciousness. And luckily most things are incompetence.”She has saved herself and her family many thousands of dollars, and

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28:53

Mom vs. Texas

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/11/14

Stephanie Wittels Wachs has a daughter born with hearing loss, which is how she found out insurance didn't cover hearing aids for kids. Those start at $6,000 and only last a few years. Stephanie teamed up with a few other moms to change Texas law... and won.Stephanie is a terrific storyteller. She's the author of Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful, a memoir about grieving her brother, Harris Wittels, a writer for TV comedies like Parks and Recreation, who died of a heroin overdose.... and she is

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2:23

Hey there! Season 3 is coming November 14. Here’s a...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/10/31

It’s going to be REALLY fun. Also, maybe useful. Catch you here soon!Also, here’s a little video preview.Bonus news: Did you know we're nominated for an award as a TRUE CRIME show? Almost too perfect. Everything on this show is legal, and that's the true crime. Here's a link — please pass it around!Wanna share it with folks? Be our guest! Here it is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Vimeo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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22:57

A place where they do health care more cheaply and...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/07/31

For our Season 2 finale, time for some inspiration.For 30 years, James Gingerich has run a super-effective clinic in Indiana, delivering great results at low cost — to high-need, low-income patients.James Gingerich stands in front of shelves holding books that Maple City Health Care Center distributes to families with young children.He’s not a modest guy, and two of his brags stand out — as a study in contrasts.One is a quote from a board member that makes him sound like a big dreamer:“People think

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17:56

An actor walks into a doctor’s office…

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/07/24

Dr. Saul Weiner is a physician and researcher at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin)Researcher Saul Weiner has been sending fake patients — actors, wired for sound — into real doctors’ offices, to learn about what actually happens, especially: How well doctors really listen to their patients.He’s tallied up what doctors miss (a lot), and how much it costs (ditto).In today’s episode, we hear what actually happened in one of those

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16:58

Whoa, this medical device is spying on me. In my...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/07/17

That’s the rude awakening Eric Umansky got when he called the company that provided his CPAP machine — a device that helps him breathe at night.He got mad. And he got even, in a way: Eric is an editor at the non-profit newsroom ProPublica, and he tipped a colleague —Marshall Allen, who covers health care there.The two of them together, in this episode, are hilarious and enlightening.The story Marshall wroteopened up bigger issues about how insurance companies are collecting all kinds of data to use

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26:36

The surprising history behind insulin’s absurd price...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/07/10

The price of insulin is iconic — doubling, tripling, multiplying like crazy, for medicine Type 1 diabetics can’t live without.To understand it, we went back almost 100 years and dug up a story of sweaty Canadian researchers — swatting away flies and doing business with probable dog-nappers, on the way to a Nobel Prize… and a deal with corporate pharma.Charles Best and Frederick Banting on the roof of the University of Toronto medical building, petting a dog they probably picked up from some shady

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1:53

Coming next week: The price of insulin

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/07/03

As we started working on season two of this podcast, there was one topic that seemed like we just had to look at: insulin.… and I wondered:There are stories about insulin prices everywhere.Would we really have something to add? Something that wasn’t just more of the same? (Enraging, terrifying, depressing.)Turns out: OH YES WE DO.And some of it is… hopeful.We are holding it back a week, so you can take a break for the holiday, come back fresh, and be ready for something epic.See you then.(If you’re

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18:29

Why are drug prices so random? Meet Mr. PBM

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/06/26

I filled a prescription recently, and the drugstore said they wanted more than 700 bucks… for an old-line generic drug. My insurance ended up knocking that down, but it was WEIRD.And it meant a big homework assignment for me.Luckily, I got help. Both from some experts, and from the classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life (source of the pictures above and below, of course).I mean, what I actually learned was not a hundred percent cheerful.We get these unpredictable prices thanks to companies

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22:00

How much for an MRI? Well, that depends…

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/06/19

This week, we look at three MRIs with four different price tags, and an enormous range.Liz Salmi and a view of her brain. (Photo: Kaiser Health News)The first two price tags come from listener Liz Salmi, who has been living with brain cancer for more than a decade.Liz gets MRI scans twice a year, to make sure the cancer isn’t growing.A couple years ago, Liz changed insurance, changed providers… and got serious sticker-shock when she saw the bill for a scan: $1,600 — AFTER insurance.So when she

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15:30

To get paid, hospitals get creative

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/06/12

Hospital bills are too high, and insurance doesn’t cover enough. Turns out, that’s a crisis for hospitals too: more and more of us aren’t paying those bills, because we can’t. So, they’re getting creative about collecting — and offering discounts. Which raises questions about why the bills are so high to begin with.Photo courtesy James CrannellWe start with Chicago woodworker James Crannell, who — and there’s no non-scary way to saythis — stuck his finger in a table saw.Even more scary: He didn’t

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23:30

We thought we had adulted properly

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/06/04

Caitlin and Corey Gaffer got a surprise letter from their insurance company — saying they were being dumped for non-payment. Except, as far as they knew, they were paid up.As it turned out, they’d made a couple of small mistakes, which they were eager to fix. But their insurer was definitely not interested. Caitlin and Corey spent fruitless weeks on the phone.And then, Caitlin’s pregnancy — more than six months along — ran into complications.They scrambled for months to get covered, while racking up

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2:06

We’re back! Here’s a taste of Season 2, launching...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2019/05/23

Hey there! We’ve been working hard on season 2. We hope you enjoy this preview — there’s so much good (and frightening) stuff ahead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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22:03

A “deal” on health insurance comes with troubling...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/12/19

Bari Tessler is a little famous as a “financial therapist,” but even she gets rattled by the price of health care.Her story is complicated. And very relatable.Bari chose to use a Christian "health share" instead of regular insurance. It's cheaper, but it comes with strings: Things the group doesn’t cover, limits on their obligations to you… and a religious vision that not everybody is comfortable with. Including Bari.She sees it, for now, as the least terrible of a bunch of terrible options — but

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19:26

Why are ER bills so horrible? Sarah Kliff spent a...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/12/12

Emergency rooms often bill you a “cover charge” just for walking in the door, and it can be thousands of dollars.That’s in addition to the huge markup on everything that happens there: seven bucks for a band-aid. Twenty dollars for a couple of pills.Reporter Sarah Kliff has collected more than a thousand ER bills from her readers at Vox.She was an expert on health care before starting this project — she covered it for years at the Washington Post before moving to Vox — but even she found plenty of

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16:32

Why Health Insurance Actually Sucks (Season One,...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/12/05

Turns out, insurance companies allow — even encourage — crazy price-gouging by hospitals. For example, the leg brace Blake needed was available for $150 on Amazon. But thanks to his insurance, he paid more than $500.Investigative reporter Jenny Gold’s work helps us understand how that kind of thing happens.She compares health care to shopping for a gallon of milk.“We can look at the cost of a gallon of milk at lots of different stores and decide which one is the best,” she says.At the store, there’s

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15:37

So, Robin Hood’s got an approach to medical bills....

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/11/27

The health-care system — especially the financial side — can feel like a Medieval torture device. So maybe it fits that workers from Renaissance fairs have come up with a work-around.In this episode I meet Robin Hood and a woman who has made more than $2 million in medical bills… disappear.Also, you’ve started sending us stories as voice memos. And they are awesome.Send more! stories@armandalegshow.com.Regular emails are nice too.You’ve sent some powerful stories that way. We are listening.Also,

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18:41

Why you (and I) will likely pick the wrong...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/11/21

Because as smart economists recently proved) it is super-confusing, and most of us can’t do the math.But! We found glimmers of hope. So don’t be scared.We’d like to hear how you’re choosing your health insurance for next year— or are you going to do without? — and what you’ve learned from past mistakes. You can scroll down and just start typing, or hit us up at insurance [[at]] arm and a leg show [[dot]] [[com]] EXTRA CREDIT: We’d love it if you send us a voice memo!Finally, we’ve got some resources

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24:31

How one drug got its $500,000 price tag. (With 99...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/11/14

The answer involves a suburban housewife, a 1970s TV star, and a Las Vegas maker of popcorn and nacho cheese sauce. Also: Wall Street.Produced with our friends at 99 Percent Invisible.Many thanks to Abbey Meyers, Joshua Schein, and Nora Guthrie.Find Us OnlineWebsite: http://armandalegshow.comTwitter: http://twitter.com/armandalegshowInstagram: http://instagram.com/armandalegshowFacebook: http://facebook.com/armandalegshowAbout UsHost: Dan Weissman (www.danweissmann.com)Editor: Whitney Henry-Lester

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19:06

All the Marbles: One woman’s epic quest for health...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2018/11/14

Laura Derrick takes a drug that costs more than $500,000 a year.So when her family was going to lose their insurance, she made crazy sacrifices… and changed the course of history.Find Us OnlineWebsite:http://armandalegshow.comTwitter:http://twitter.com/armandalegshowInstagram:http://instagram.com/armandalegshowFacebook:http://facebook.com/armandalegshowAbout UsHost: Dan Weissman (www.danweissmann.com)Editor: Whitney Henry-Lester (thedarlingkiller.com)Consulting Producer: Daisy Rosario (@RunDMR)Audio

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162 results

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