An Arm and a Leg

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We thought we had adulted properly Jun 04, 2019

Show notes

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 about $30,000 in hospital bills.

There’s a happy ending. Two, in fact.

First, their baby was born healthy (and insured) in January. She’s in the episode too, and she’s adorable.

Maggie, Corey, and Caitlin Gaffer, with Luna the dog. (Photo by Lauren Cutshall.)

Second: In March their old insurer offered an apology — and offered to reinstate them. (This was the day after a reporter called to ask the insurer for their side of the story.)

… but the whole journey was harrowing, and opens up questions about what kinds of safeguards consumers have — or should have — against getting dropped.

Welcome to Season Two!

This story — like a lot of this season — came straight from my inbox. A few days after the show launched, I got an email with the subject line “Pregnant woman and her husband in Minnesota need help.”

We’ve got new friends!

We’ve got co-producers for Season Two, Kaiser Health News. Three things to know:

First: Kaiser Health News is not affiliated with the giant health care provider Kaiser Permanente. They share an ancestor — which is a fun story I’ve written all about here.

Second: They ARE a great non-profit newsroom covering health care in America, an editorially independent project of the Kaiser Family Foundation. (There’s that name again. And again, here’s the story.)

Third: Their editor-in-chief is one of the people who inspired this show.

YEP. The whole story is worth reading. I am so pleased and proud to be working with these folks.

Catch you next time. Till then, how about…

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We’re back! Here’s a taste of Season 2, launching June 4. May 23, 2019

Show notes

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.

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A “deal” on health insurance comes with troubling strings Dec 19, 2018

Show notes

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 she’s conflicted about it.

Also: What my family is doing for health insurance next year.

And: A taste from one of the most painfully-hilarious things to hit the Internet for a long time. Welcome to Our Modern Hospital, Where if You Want to Know a Price, You Can Go F*** Yourself, published by McSweeney’s.

There’s a longer excerpt, and an interview with the author, Alex Baia — that’s on our Patreon. Thanks to Alex for permission to record excerpts, and to ttsreader for dramatizing the text for us!

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Our Team:

Host: Dan Weissman (www.danweissmann.com)
Editor: Whitney Henry-Lester (thedarlingkiller.com)
Consulting Producer: Daisy Rosario (@RunDMR)
Audio Wizardy: Adam Raymonda (adamraymonda.com)
Music: David Winer (wearefancymountain.com)

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Why are ER bills so horrible? Sarah Kliff spent a year finding out. (Season One, episode 7) Dec 12, 2018

Show notes

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 surprises.

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Website: http://armandalegshow.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/armandalegshow
Instagram: http://instagram.com/armandalegshow
Facebook: http://facebook.com/armandalegshow

About Us

Host: Dan Weissman (www.danweissmann.com)
Editor: Whitney Henry-Lester (thedarlingkiller.com)
Consulting Producer: Daisy Rosario (@RunDMR)
Audio Wizardy: Adam Raymonda (adamraymonda.com)
Music: David Winer (wearefancymountain.com)

Image adapted from a drawing posted to flickr by Wellness Corporate Solutions.

Support the show: https://armandalegshow.com/support/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Health Insurance Actually Sucks (Season One, episode 6) Dec 05, 2018

Show notes

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 maybe there’s a couple different brands, with the prices on the shelf. We pick the one we want, pay on the way out.

“Now with healthcare,” she says, “the analogy would be, you go to the store for a gallon of milk. You have no idea what it costs. You don’t know what it costs at that store compared to other stores. You walk into a random store, pick out a gallon of milk, go through check-out. You still don’t know what it costs. You give them your credit card information and then a few weeks later you get a bill telling you how much they charged you.”

Super-crazy. Jenny’s reporting shows how insurance companies help to keep those prices hidden, and keep them high.

Jenny Gold works for Kaiser Health News — which, we should explain, is not part of Kaiser Permanente health care. It’s part of an independent foundation that basically runs on an endowment set up by Mr. Kaiser, more than 50 years ago.

RESOURCE ALERT: Jenny’s boss, former New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal, published an amazing book in 2017: An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. I have been studying it like a bible and a playbook since I started working on this show.

If you want to really get mad — and learn a ton about how health care got so crazy in the U.S. — this is the book to read.

An audio version of Jenny’s story ran on the public-radio show Marketplace. Thanks to Kaiser Health News, and to Marketplace for the story and for the tape of Sarah Azad and Ken Weber.

Photo, above: by Liza, via Flickr. CC 2.0 license.

Thanks again to the great Mucca Pazza for the use of their tune War of Amusements at the close of this episode.

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So, Robin Hood’s got an approach to medical bills. (Season One, episode 5) Nov 27, 2018

Show notes

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, you’ve shared tips, including this CBS News story about insurance companies refusing to pay ER bills. Super-timely, since we’ve got a story about ER bills coming up in the next couple of weeks.

You can find more information about the Rescu Foundation at the group’s website: rescufoundation.org

(Photo from the Sherwood Forest Faire Facebook Page.)

Support the show: https://armandalegshow.com/support/

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Why you (and I) will likely pick the wrong health-insurance plan (Season One, episode 4) Nov 21, 2018

Show notes

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 here — guides from some smart, friendly folks — to help you get smarter and avoid some worst-case outcomes.

The basics from a smart, kind civilian: Arm and a Leg listener Anna Jo Beck gave herself an education on the topic after her husband was diagnosed with cancer (he’s fine now) — and captured what she learned in a charming, self-published booklet. For Your Health: Making Sense of American Health Insurance starts with “What is it, and do I need it?” and goes on from there. BONUS: It’s peppered with what Anna describes as “moments of cute, heartwarming distraction to keep you from wanting to totally give up hope.”
Another version of the basics, from a smart journalist: Vox.com health-care reporter Sarah Kliff published I’m a health-care reporter. Here’s how I shop for health insurance in 2015. It’s still a good primer.
More advanced and detailed (also funny), from another smart journalist: Business Insider’s health editor Zachary Tracer chronicled his own decision-making — including actual math — in fall 2018: My company offers free health insurance — here’s why I decided to spend $1,000 more on a better plan.

The basic premise all around: If you can afford to think about anything but the lowest-possible monthly premium, then a good thing to think about is: Financially speaking, what’s the worst-case scenario, if I get hit by a bus or something?

Which is not exactly a fun scenario to contemplate, but still. It’s why the very cheapest plans, in terms of what you pay every month, may not be a good deal.

The Oh My Dollar podcast goes into good-humored detail in a recent Halloween episode, The $30 Spooky Health Plan You Probably Don’t Want. (No time to listen? No problem: They’ve done a great write-up.)

This episode closes with War of Amusements by Mucca Pazza—a Chicago treasure since 2004. The group’s self-description — “the marching band that thinks it’s a rock’n’roll band” — doesn’t begiin to do it justice. You can download the track on a pay-what-you-want basis, or listen on Spotify.

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How one drug got its $500,000 price tag. (With 99 Percent Invisible– Season One, episode 3) Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

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 Online

Website: http://armandalegshow.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/armandalegshow
Instagram: http://instagram.com/armandalegshow
Facebook: http://facebook.com/armandalegshow

About Us

Host: Dan Weissman (www.danweissmann.com)
Editor: Whitney Henry-Lester (thedarlingkiller.com)
Consulting Producer: Daisy Rosario (@RunDMR)
Social Media Magic: Multitude Productions (http://multitude.productions)

Support the show: https://armandalegshow.com/support/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All the Marbles: One woman’s epic quest for health insurance (Season One, episode 2) Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

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 Online

Website: http://armandalegshow.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/armandalegshow
Instagram: http://instagram.com/armandalegshow
Facebook: http://facebook.com/armandalegshow

About Us

Host: Dan Weissman (www.danweissmann.com)
Editor: Whitney Henry-Lester (thedarlingkiller.com)
Consulting Producer: Daisy Rosario (@RunDMR)
Audio Wizard: Adam Raymonda (adamraymonda.com)

Support the show: https://armandalegshow.com/support/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is Water, and it sucks. Let’s talk. (Season One, episode 1) Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

When I first started talking about doing a show about the cost of health care… everybody had a story. Including me.

It’s like that famous speech by the writer David Foster Wallace called This is Water. It starts with a joke about two young fish swimming along. An older fish passes by and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?”

He goes, then one young fish turns to the other and says, “What the hell is water?”

Sound familiar? The cost of health care is like water. We’re all surrounded by it. We don’t even see it anymore.

That’s what this show is for: To help us see the water we’re in, and figure out together how to navigate it, and keep each other good company along the way. Maybe we’ll tell some jokes– dark ones– along the way. Welcome aboard.

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