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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

0:57

This is An Arm and a Leg

An Arm and a Leg ·

2025/01/06

An Arm and a Legis a show about why health care costs so freaking much, and what we can (maybe) do about it. New episodes every three weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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11:47

A listener fighting the good fight

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/12/30

A few weeks ago, a listener sent us a note with a link to a news article about a new resolution that had recently been adopted by the American Medical Association – the largest group representing doctors in the US.The resolution said: hospitals need to do more to guarantee charity care to patients who qualify. Legislators and regulators should make them.Our listener was the author of that resolution, and he told us he first learned about charity care through this podcast.His name is Joey Ballard and

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27:19

Revisiting ‘Christmas In July’

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/12/12

Hey there. It’s a great time to support our work. Right now, every gift gets matched! Here’s where to do it. Today we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes from the archive – a story about giving – and bringing you an update.In 1980, a young father named Denny Buehler was battling leukemia and needed to travel from Cincinnati to Seattle for treatment. To raise the money, his friends and family threw a softball tournament.Denny passed away a few months later. But his friends and family turned

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28:06

New lessons from the fight for charity care

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/11/22

Hey, first: This is a GREAT time to support us — right now, every gift gets matched!Click here to support us.Longtime listeners to this show know we’ve been talking about something called “charity care” for years. Federal law requires that all nonprofit hospitals have charity care policies – that is, financial assistance policies — to reduce or remove people’s medical bills.The problem: people don’t know about it, and hospitals don’t always make it easy to access. New research suggests that the

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22:28

Fight health insurance — with help from AI

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/11/01

Several listeners sent us an article with the headline Make your health insurance cry, about a new AI tool to fight health insurance. We had to learn more.Meet Holden Karau: a Bay Area software engineer who says she’s “trying to make health insurance suck a little bit less.”So she’s created an AI tool to appeal insurance denials.Her project, Fight Health Insurance, is a labor of love (she’s not earning money from it) and fueled by hatred (of insurance companies).It draws on her tech expertise and on

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24:34

Can racism make you sick?

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/10/17

Something different: We talk with journalist Cara Anthony about topics that don’t always come up in conversations about the cost of health care.For the last four years, she’s been reporting on the public health effects of racism, violence, and intergenerational trauma in a small Missouri town.. The result: A new documentary and podcast series called Silence in Sikeston. She sat down with us to talk about the value of breaking silences and the possibility for healing.Here’s a transcript of this

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31:48

Special Feature: A Beloved Nursing Home, from “To See...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/10/01

We're sharing an episode of “To See Each Other,” about a question that’s SUPER-relevant to this show: How do we pay for long-term care, like nursing homes?To See Each Other aims to complicate the narrative about small-town Americans. In this new season, host George Goehl heads to Lincoln County, Wisconsin — population, 28,000-and-some. And home to a publicly-run nursing home with a 5-star quality rating from the feds.A conservative county board plans to sell the home to a private operator, but

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23:31

“Baby steps” in the fight against facility fees

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/09/26

An $88 “observation room” fee for a check-up didn’t sit right with Kari Greene, a listener from Oregon. When the price went up to $99 the next year, Kari complained to her benefits rep; they thought it was weird, too — but couldn’t do anything about it.In states like Connecticut and Indiana, legislators are trying to do something about fees like these – often called “facility fees.”In this episode, we go deep on Kari’s bill, one of dozens that listeners have shared with us over the past few

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27:10

Anatomy of a Fall: One rural hospital’s ransomware...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/09/05

What happens when a hospital gets hit by a ransomware attack? We’re sharing an episode from a podcast called Click Here that takes us inside the aftermath of a cyber attack on a rural hospital in Oregon.The story starts the minute the hospital’s IT director finds out they’ve been hacked, and follows him and his colleagues as they scramble to keep the place running while they try to get it back online.It’s a fascinating adventure, and it gives us a window into the growing problem of cyberattacks in

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24:11

Don’t get “bullied” into paying what you don’t owe

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/08/15

Caitlyn Mai expected her share of a recent surgery bill to be about $2,000, with insurance covering the rest.Then she started getting alerts on her phone from the hospital that she owed $139,000 — the full cost of her surgery.But Caitlyn, a legal assistant in Oklahoma, instinctively knew a cardinal rule of the American healthcare system — “never pay the first bill.”It’s a lesson we first heard from the journalist Marshall Allen, whose 2021 book Never Pay the First Bill serves as a how-to guide for

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3:06

We want to see your hospital bills

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/07/25

We’re starting a new investigation and need your help. We’re looking into something we’ve talked about a lot on this show: hospital financial assistance – also known as “charity care” — which most hospitals are legally required to offer.Something like 60 percent of people might qualify to have their hospital bills reduced or even forgiven through charity care — but of course nowhere close to 60 percent of people actually get that assistance.A lot of people just don’t know about it. (A survey our

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25:30

The woman who beat an $8,000 hospital fee

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/07/11

Georgann Boatright's local hospital told her she'd need to pay an $8,000 "operating room" charge for a test she was pretty darn sure wouldn't involve an operating room. So she went elsewhere, even though it meant driving to another state.Avoiding that charge required more than just a willingness to go — literally — way out of her way.Georgann Boatright has knowledge, skills, and grit that most of us don't — although we can maybe learn a thing or two from her.More and more, people are noticing sneaky

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2:02

Coming soon: your stories on facility fees

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/07/03

For months now, you’ve been sharing stories with us about facility fees, those sneaky fees that keep showing up on your medical bills.Facility fees are kind of like a cover charge for visiting a health care facility, usually one owned by a hospital. And many of you have been blindsided by them.Some of you have been going to the same place for years, only to one day get a brand new charge, seemingly out of nowhere. Many of you only found out about a facility fee after the fact, while some of you

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24:54

Meet the Middleman’s Middleman

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/06/13

Folks who expected their health insurance to cover some out-of-network care have been getting stuck with enormous bills instead. Like one couple from Kansas City: Their insurance hung them out to dry for thousands of dollars, all while sending statements touting a “discount” the couple was supposedly getting.Turned out: A middleman was cutting their coverage — actually a middleman’s middleman — working with their insurance company. The couple’s insurer got the “discount,” and the middlemen got big

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23:05

Staying on Medicaid seems tougher than it should be

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/05/23

We take our first look at Medicaid— the big, federally-funded health insurance program for folks with lower incomes— for two reasons:First, it’s a huge part of our health-care system. Medicaid covers a quarter of all Americans, and four in ten children.Second, it’s timely: In the last year, more than 20 million people have lost Medicaid —even though there’s evidence to suggest a lot of those people probably still qualify.More than two-thirds have been dropped for “procedural reasons” — basically,

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10:22

We’re digging into “facility fees.” We need your help.

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/05/02

We’re launching a brand new project and need your help!We’re zooming in on charges that are becoming more and more common on your medical bills: facility fees.Facility fees are charges tacked onto your bill for visiting a doctor’s office or clinic related to a hospital or larger health care system… or even talking with a doctor who’s in one of those places on a telehealth visit.If you’ve ever seen a charge for a facility fee on your medical bill, we want to hear from you.... and if you haven't, we'd

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21:38

The Hack

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/04/11

When a subsidiary of the giant UnitedHealth Group got hit by a cyberattack recently, a big chunk of the country’s doctors, pharmacists, hospitals and therapists just stopped getting paid.It’s been a huge disruption, with some providers wondering if they can keep their doors open.But thanks to their huge size and reach, the situation may have had a silver lining — for United.Which seems like a big problem, and got us wondering: What can we maybe do about it?The answer turns out to be: Maybe more than

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30:05

Son of Medicare: Attack of the Machines

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/03/21

Reporter Bob Herman from STAT News unpacks his blockbuster investigation about the country’s biggest health care company.Covering the American health care system means we tell some scary stories. But this episode is almost like a horror movie.It’s got some of Hollywood’s favorite tropes: Machines taking over. Monsters from separate franchises meeting face to face in a new movie, like Godzilla and King Kong, or Jason and Freddy. And a couple perceptive folks warning everyone, ”Hey, look, something

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29:11

The Medicare Episode

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/02/29

Health insurance sucks. Which leaves lots of us counting down the days until we turn 65 and can get on Medicare – the federal government’s health insurance program for seniors.But Medicare is a lot more complicated – and costs more money – than a lot of us realize. (Also, it involves insurance companies.) And:t There will be huge, complicated decisions to make when you turn 65, that can have huge consequences.The biggest, and most consequential: Choosing between original Medicare and Medicare

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25:17

Wait, is insulin cheaper now?

An Arm and a Leg ·

2024/02/08

A listener wrote to us at the beginning of the year with a query, “I was just reading the news about the price of insulin going down to $35! Is that for everyone?”It turns out, there is a lot of good news about the so-called “poster child” for the high cost of prescription drugs. But to say it costs $35 now is an oversimplification – and diabetes activists don’t think this fight is over.Senior producer and self-proclaimed “insulin correspondent” Emily Pisacreta took a hard look at the recent

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