An Arm and a Leg

Nov 01 2024 133 ep. 21 mins 2.6k

An Arm and a Leg Podcast artwork

A show about why health care costs so freaking much, and what we can (maybe) do about it. Hosted by award-winning reporter Dan Weissmann (Marketplace, 99 Percent Invisible, Planet Money, Reveal).
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Fight health insurance — with help from AI

Nov 01 2024 22 mins

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

Can racism make you sick?

Oct 17 2024 24 mins

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. &

Special Feature: A Beloved Nursing Home, from “To See Each Other”

Oct 01 2024 31 mins

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 public

“Baby steps” in the fight against facility fees

Sep 26 2024 23 mins

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 call

Anatomy of a Fall: One rural hospital’s ransomware story (from Click Here)

Sep 05 2024 27 mins

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

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

Aug 15 2024 24 mins

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

We want to see your hospital bills

Jul 25 2024 3 mins

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 �

The woman who beat an $8,000 hospital fee

Jul 11 2024 25 mins

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, skil

Coming soon: your stories on facility fees

Jul 03 2024 2 mins

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 ge

Meet the Middleman’s Middleman

Jun 13 2024 24 mins

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