An Arm and a Leg

That’s the rude awakening Eric Umansky got when he called the company that provided his CPAP machine — a device that helps him breathe at night. He got mad. And he got even, in a way: Eric is an editor at the non-profit newsroom ProPublica, and he tipped a colleague —Marshall Allen, who covers health care there. The two of them together, in this episode, are hilarious and enlightening. T he story...

The price of insulin is iconic — doubling , tripling , multiplying like crazy , for medicine Type 1 diabetics can’t live without. To understand it, we went back almost 100 years and dug up a story of sweaty Canadian researchers — swatting away flies and doing business with probable dog-nappers, on the way to a Nobel Prize… and a deal with corporate pharma. Charles Best and Frederick Banting on the...

As we started working on season two of this podcast, there was one topic that seemed like we just had to look at: insulin. … and I wondered: There are stories about insulin prices everywhere. Would we really have something to add? Something that wasn’t just more of the same? (Enraging, terrifying, depressing.) Turns out: OH YES WE DO. And some of it is… hopeful. We are holding it back a...

I filled a prescription recently, and the drugstore said they wanted more than 700 bucks… for an old-line generic drug. My insurance ended up knocking that down, but it was WEIRD. And it meant a big homework assignment for me. Luckily, I got help. Both from some experts, and from the classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life (source of the pictures above and below, of course). I mean, wha...

This week, we look at three MRIs with four different price tags, and an enormous range.  Liz Salmi and a view of her brain. (Photo: Kaiser Health News) The first two price tags come from listener Liz Salmi, who has been living with brain cancer for more than a decade. Liz gets MRI scans twice a year, to make sure the cancer isn’t growing.  A couple years ago, Liz changed insurance, chang...

Hospital bills are too high, and insurance doesn’t cover enough. Turns out, that’s a crisis for hospitals too: more and more of us aren’t paying those bills, because we can’t. So, they’re getting creative about collecting — and offering discounts. Which raises questions about why the bills are so high to begin with. Photo courtesy James Crannell We start with Chicago woodworker James Crannell, who...

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...

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 comfortabl...

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 proj...

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...

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@armandale...

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 s...

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: h...

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 H...

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 hel...

The spiraling cost of medical care shapes people’s lives: The jobs we’re afraid to leave because of insurance, the risk that a trip to the doc could end in bankruptcy. It’s not healthy. This is my story too, and that’s why I’m making this podcast. Here’s what I’ve got in mind. An Arm and a Leg  will be entertaining, empowering— even useful. As  a reporter , I’ll bring my skill at finding...