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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

26:49

A $229,000 medical bill goes to court

An Arm and a Leg ·

2023/04/13

Before her surgery, a hospital told Lisa French she would end up owing them $1,337. After insurance paid them — more than they’d expected — the hospital billed her $229,000. And sued her for it.Her case went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court.The questions before the court, and how they ruled, have potentially major implications for our legal rights when it comes to fighting unfair medical bills — and how some hospitals might be thinking about their next move.Here’s a transcript of the

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28:59

A doctor’s love letter to ‘the People’s Hospital’

An Arm and a Leg ·

2023/03/23

What if we had a decent, publicly-funded health system — available to everybody, with or without insurance? We’ve got one, says Dr. Ricardo Nuila. It’s where he works.And it could be a model for the whole country. Yes, really.That’s the pitch he makes in his new book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine. It’s a love letter to Houston’s Ben Taub hospital, and an argument for bringing Ben Taub’s model — efficient, innovative, and cheap —to the rest of the country.And if that

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19:41

Lessons from “wrestling with a giant”

An Arm and a Leg ·

2023/03/02

The ER visit was quick and uneventful. The bill was $1,300. Our listener decided to push back. He didn't win, but he learned a lot — and so did we.We had help, from an expert we met by visiting a Renaissance Fair — which we did in this very fun early episode. Kaelyn Globig, head of advocacy for the Rescu Foundation, is a medical-bill wizard, and no one has taught us more.In this story, she teaches us how to find out what Medicare pays for a given procedure — here’s the guide she shared with us — and

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25:36

The bill looked like BS. So she took it to small...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2023/02/09

“I sued a hospital in small claims court and lost — here’s what I learned.” That was the subject line for an email we got from listener Lauren Slemenda.She wrote: “I feel like I won” — and we knew we needed to talk with her.She wants to encourage more people to try taking providers to court over unfair bills.“If everybody that they screw stands up,” she says, “They can't afford to pay a lawyer to defend against all of those [cases].”It’s an interesting idea for sure — What if more people use small

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21:25

Can They Freaking Do That?!? (2023 Edition)

An Arm and a Leg ·

2023/01/19

We’re kicking off the year with a throwback. We revisit a 2019 episode that opened up new possibilities for fighting back against outrageous medical bills — a theme we’ll spend a lot more time exploring this yearA listener named Miriam got a bill from a medical testing lab she’s never heard of, for $35. Then, a follow-up bill said if she didn’t pay up right away, that price was going up — WAY up: to $1,287.Which raises the kind of question that comes up a LOT with medical billing: Can some random

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13:42

2022 in Review

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/12/29

The Arm and a Leg editorial team gathered to talk about the moments from 2022 that we’ll never forget — including when work collided with real life.We’re so lucky we get to do this work, and we couldn’t do it without our community. From sending us your stories and questions, to supporting the show financially, our listeners and subscribers are what this show runs on. Thank you.If you want to help us take on 2023, now is a great time to contribute. This month, every dollar you donate is DOUBLED,

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25:45

Like pulling teeth.

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/12/19

When a car hit Susan and knocked out a bunch of teeth, her health insurance was supposed to pay for her oral surgery, and she knew it. So why has she had to chase them for 18 months and counting?Getting insurance to pay for anything dental is usually hard, but this had us asking ourselves… is it usually this hard?We connected Susan with law professor Jacqueline Fox — who, when she was practicing law, fought insurers on behalf of patients. And who says Susan has “done everything right.”We’ve started

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18:58

The best video about health insurance, ever

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/12/01

A couple months ago, we started getting messages from listeners telling us: you gotta watch this video.It’s a thirty minute YouTube video from a creator named Brian David Gilbert, and it’s probably the best video about health insurance we’ve ever seen.Brian David Gilbert is best known for his highly-detailed, hilarious videos for Polygon, a media company about video games. But when he left that job to strike out on his own, he needed new health insurance. We talked with him about how that experience

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26:06

Health insurance post-Roe, and a grassroots network...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/11/17

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion has been banned in more than a dozen states. As you choose your insurance plan for next year, you might be wondering: How does that affect my insurance plan? We learned two big things.First: There’s no one answer (and few answers are settled yet). A lot depends on where you live, and where you work.But second: For lots of people, for a long time, insurance has rarely been a help in accessing abortion. Most people pay cash. And lots of people

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26:43

A listener asks: Could NOT having insurance be a...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/11/03

It’s open enrollment for 2023 health insurance for lots of folks — a time when you might find yourself asking: what good is health insurance anyway?One listener wrote to us about his son, a student with no income. Dad asks, If the son could get charity care (financial assistance) at his local hospital…. should he bother getting health insurance?The big picture question: If you’re broke, and can’t get insurance from work, what are your best options?The big picture answer: It totally depends!Do you

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5:10

Quick update from Arm and a Leg HQ

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/10/20

Hey there,You may have noticed, we've been keeping a slower pace for the last few months — publishing every three weeks instead of every two — since Dan recovered from COVID.And every-three-weeks is gonna stay our default for now. Putting out the show more often was wrecking Dan's health, and some important behind-the-scenes work just wasn't getting done. When we slowed down the podcast release schedule, we also suspended the First Aid Kit newsletter, which compiles our most-useful information for

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19:26

California plans to make its own insulin and sell it...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/09/29

This year, the state of California put up $100 million to produce its own insulin, and sell it for cheap. How’s it going to work? (Is it going to work?)The price of insulin could be the starkest example of our out-of-control health care system: More than 7 million Americans need it to survive, and some die because they can’t afford it— medicine that’s been around for 100 years, medicine its discoverers didn’t want to patent.We look at how California’s plan came to be, and what might stand in the

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26:01

Congress fixed (a piece of) Medicare. It only took a...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/09/08

Lots of seniors have to pay thousands of dollars for drugs—even tens of thousands—or do without life-saving medicine. That’s finally going to change.The new Inflation Reduction Act will set a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors. (Yes, it’ll do a bunch of other stuff too.)It took a long time. Folks like researcher Stacie Dusetzina spent years building evidence about how Medicare prescription drug policy was failing people with cancer and other conditions.The pharmaceutical industry

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23:58

The Medical-bill "Negotiation Lab"

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/08/18

It’s often possible to negotiate medical bills. It sounds hard — and it can be — but what if we got it down to a science? Mapped out all the moves ahead of time? Jared Walker and his team at the nonprofit Dollar For are running a big experiment to see if they can do just that. And we got to visit the lab.The folks at Dollar For caught our attention — and lots of other people’s—when they went super-viral on TikTok with a 60-second recipe for crushing medical debt by accessing charity care, financial

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18:02

The Genetic Testing ‘Bait-and-Switch’

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/07/28

Is it possible for a health care company to make enough people mad about their billing practices that it hurts their business? For one genetic testing company, maybe so.An Arm and a Leg listener Jessica got a test that’s become routine in early pregnancy: non-invasive prenatal testing. It was supposed to be $99. But then — after she took the test — that turned into $250. And when she asked questions, she was told it could go up to $800 if she didn’t pay up quick. , Jessica looked up the testing

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21:14

One ER Doc’s Journey Through the Pandemic — and the...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/07/07

Thomas Fisher is an emergency room doc in Chicago. His book, The Emergency, is an up-close chronicle of the COVID pandemic’s first year in his South Side ER.It also zooms out to tell the story of his journey as a doctor: How his upbringing on the South Side fueled his desire to become a doctor. And how the realities and inequities of American health care limited his ability to help.He details how the failures of the American health care system — and the racial inequities it perpetuates — leave

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21:42

These docs are trying to kick private equity out of...

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/06/16

About a third of ER doctors now work for companies backed by private equity. A lot of those docs do not like the arrangement, which they say puts profits ahead of patients. Now, a group of ER docs are suing to kick one of those private-equity owned companies out of their hospital-- and all of California. They see it as the first step in a long, long fight.The suit cites California’s ban on the “corporate practice of medicine” — which is supposed to outlaw situations where non-doctors tell doctors

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17:37

Credit Where It’s Due

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/05/26

Credit reporting bureaus announced in April that they would start taking most medical debt off of people’s credit reports. At first, we weren’t sure that would be such a huge deal. After all, the medical debt would still exist, people would still get harassed by debt collectors, or even sued over it. But it turns out, there’s a bunch of reasons why these changes could be life-changing, and we want to give credit (the good kind) where it’s due.The changes include:Paid-off medical debt disappears from

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19:56

“The Golden Age of Older Rectums” (for investors)

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/05/05

A new golden age is dawning, and it starts where the sun don’t shine.A listener got a pricey quote for her colonoscopy, but the medical practice behind it seems like “the only game in town.” We scope it out and learn the surprising reason why: Investors have decided your butt is a goldmine.Private equity investors have made theirway into many areas of our lives. Now, they’re at the gastroenterologist’s —and lots of other medical specialists, too. We learned why these doctors are selling their

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0:59

Sick Note, pt. 2: Dang

An Arm and a Leg ·

2022/04/21

Dan’s COVID has hung on there for a while, kept him SUPER tired. Yoinks. Back in a couple weeks!Meanwhile, as always, we'd love for you to:Get in touch to share a story or your thoughts. Subscribe to First Aid Kit, our newsletter about how to survive the health-care systemSupport us: Your donations are this show's biggest source of income. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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