An Arm and a Leg

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 ca...

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 nowher...

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 insuranc...

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 probabl...

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 f...

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 ...

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 Kin...

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. 

Th...

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 “...

Dealing with the American health care system as a patient means lots of tough moments – unexpected bills, meds not covered, insurance and hospitals making you go back and forth without a clear answer, endless hold times and phone trees… the list goes on. 

So listeners ask us all the time: How do I stay strong and fight for my rights without totally losing my s---? 

We’re bringing back one of our most useful episodes...

Real quick: Now's the best time to support this show! Thanks to a few super-star Arm and a Leg listener/donors, your donation is matched two for one right now. Here's the link to donate.

Ok, now: We’ve got a mini-episode for you today, a four-minute coda to the epic story we brought you in December.

It features a last tip for anyone who might want to ask a hospital about charity care — which, as we learned from these recent ...

Hey! The BEST time to support this show with a donation just got even better. Right now, any gift you make, up to $1,000, will be matched TWO for ONE, thanks to a few super-generous Arm and a Leg fans who’ve pooled their dough. . It’s a great deal, and it will set us up to kick maximum butt in 2024. Here’s the link, go for it!

And… are you ready for our most-ambitious story yet? We’ve been working on this investigation all year,...

Hey, it’s the BEST time to support this show with a donation. Thanks to NewsMatch, any gift you make, up to $1,000, will be doubled. It’s a great deal, and it will set us up to kick maximum butt in 2024. Here’s the link, go for it!

We’ve been working on this investigation all year, with our partners at Scripps News and the Baltimore Banner. 

For years, we’ve been hearing about hospitals suing patients over unpaid medical...

Last fall, actor-writers Ellen Haun and Dru Johnston were hustling to get their health insurance sorted out for 2023. To qualify for insurance through the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, Ellen would have to book a little more work — doable, but not a sure bet. 

So they came up with a plan: crowdfund a bunch of money to make a short film, starring Ellen … called “Ellen Needs Insurance,” of course.

It worked! And the movie, a 13...

In 2019, Dr. Luke Messac was a medical resident who found himself spending his day off in a courthouse archive. He’d heard about hospitals suing their own patients over unpaid medical bills. He wanted to know if the hospitals he worked in were doing the same. They were. 

Trained as a historian, Messac then set out to trace the history of this phenomenon, and the story of medical debt in the U.S.

His new book, Your Money ...

First: an update on our recent two-parter with the writer John Green, about the global, decades-long fight to make an important tuberculosis drug more widely available. 

Just two days after we posted part 2, the activists waging that battle scored a major victory. John Green was kvelling on YouTube, of course. We’ll get you up to speed. 

And for the meat of this episode, we’ve got a guest a lot of you have been aski...

This is part two of our globe-spanning story about drugs, patents, and YouTube megastar John Green. 

Quick recap: In our last episode, we learned how writer and YouTube star John Green kicked up a fight with Johnson & Johnson over a medicine called bedaquiline. And appeared to score a victory.

Here, we dig into the backstory: How everything John Green and his fans won was built on activism going back 20 years, and sp...

This episode  is special. When we heard that widely-beloved writer John Green was rallying his online community  around a fight over drug prices — and apparently making a difference — we were pumped. And this story took us in so many different directions:  Literally around the world, and then straight back home.

The drug in question is bedaquiline, made by Johnson & Johnson. It treats drug-resistant tuberculos...

Hey there— our next story is gonna take a little more time to cook, but it is going to be SO worth it.

It involves John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars — and yes, we've got an interview with him — and a global fight against multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

... which turns out to be directly related to fights over the prices of drugs like insulin and humira in this country.

Meanwhile, let me recommend a story from P...