PODCAST · society
An Arm and a Leg
by An Arm and a Leg
An Arm and a Leg is 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 distributed in partnership with KUOW.You can support An Arm and a Leg by donating at armandalegshow.com/support/Show Credits: Created, hosted, and produced by Dan Weissmann with senior producer Emily Pisacreta and engagement producer Claire Davenport, edited by Ellen Weiss. Audio wizard: Adam Raymonda. Music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations. Lynne Johnson is our operations manager.
Episodes
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Hidden Help: What Happened When Oregon Forced Hospitals to Boost Financial Aid? (From Tradeoffs)
Charity care — financial assistance that nonprofit hospitals are required to offer — is one of the most powerful tools we have to avoid medical debt. But for too many people, that help is hidden. The journalists at the podcast Tradeoffs teamed up with our colleagues at KFF Health News to look at...
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Medicare plans keep disappearing
By October 1, at least two million seniors will get alarming notices: Their health plans — which they got through Medicare Advantage, the version of Medicare run by private insurance companies — will disappear at the end of the year. Many of them will be stuck without a lot of options. In some...
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System meltdown: employer-sponsored health insurance
Employer-sponsored health insurance covers 165.6 million Americans. It’s the default. For lots of workers, it’s a key reason to accept a job offer, or to stay in a job. But that system is slowly imploding. As premiums have grown explosively — the average employer plan now prices out at $27,000…
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A Texas doctor’s love letter to ‘the People’s Hospital’ (from 2023)
We’re bringing back a favorite episode from 2023 that raises a question as relevant as ever: 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...
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Julie Rovner is worried: Checking in with a veteran DC reporter.
Last May, just a few months into the second Trump Administration, changes to federal health programs were happening at a bewildering pace. We brought in KFF Heath News Chief Washington Correspondent Julie Rover to help give us — and you — a big picture look at what some changes would mean. A...
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How to Fight a Health Insurance Denial With a Little-Known Tool (from ProPublica’s "Paper Trail")
After her husband L was hospitalized for a severe mental health crisis, Teressa barely had a moment to breathe before the health insurance denials started coming in, burying their family in medical debt. But Teressa’s a fighter, and an organized one at that — ready to endure months of back and...
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The Prescription Drug Playbook (Full Version)
While we’re busy working on some big projects this summer, we’re re-releasing some of our most ambitious and useful reporting to date. Last year, we set out on a mission: Collect all the best advice about what to do when your prescription drugs cost more than you can afford. Our listeners wrote…
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The Chatbot Will See You Now: Big Tech In Therapy (from Organized Money)
One place you might assume is safe from prying ears is your therapy session. But as more therapists struggle to negotiate with insurers, they’re turning to tech middlemen like BetterHelp and Headway that promise to take care of the insurance admin and match them with patients. And these companies...
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The Supreme Court case that could slow generic drugs
It’s a case you’ve (probably) never heard of: This week, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Hikma v. Amarin — a legal battle that could impact how much you ultimately pay for prescription drugs. Here’s why the case matters: As soon as a generic version of a brand-name drug comes to...
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Why drugs cost so much, 101: Medicine monopolies
We’re always asking: Why do drugs cost so freaking much? And it’s a complicated question. There are a bunch of reasons — to be sure. But in our reporting over the years, like our stories on insulin and tuberculosis drugs, experts cited one big reason over and over again: The pharmaceutical…
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‘Not workable’: How two Americans picked a plan this year — or didn’t
This year, the price of health insurance increased dramatically for millions of people. Tens of millions. Obamacare subsidies shrunk, and premiums skyrocketed. People asked themselves: how on earth am I supposed to make this work? Two of those folks — attorney Nicole Wipp and skate-shop owner…
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The EpiPen and Food Allergies (from Drug Story)
Hey, first! We’re looking for your help. Can you take a couple minutes and fill out our Audience Survey? We’re dying to know more about the community that’s using this show — and about what’s working for you and what you’d like to see. Let us know! Today we’re switching it up. We’re sharing an...
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NYT’s Ron Lieber: ‘These people are not going to win.'
Thirty-six hours before his wife was scheduled for a major surgery, New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber got a letter in the mail that sent him reeling. Insurance was denying prior authorization for the surgery. The only way forward would be to appeal the decision. But it was...
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'Sh**’s wild': Scaling up, doubling down, and buckling in
For five years, we’ve been following the work of Dollar For and its founder Jared Walker, watching them quickly scale up their efforts to help people crush medical debt by tapping into “charity care” — the financial assistance that hospitals are legally required to offer some patients. Their work...
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Our favorite project of 2025 levels up – and you can help
Hey, first! If you value what we do, we need your support to keep it going in 2026. We have SO much work ahead, and we can’t do it without you. Every little bit counts. Here’s where you can chip in. Thank you SO much! Our listeners have been teaming up on an incredible project – kicked off…
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Some more things that didn’t suck in 2025
Hey, first! If you value what we do, this is the best-ever time to support our work. We have SO much work ahead in 2026. Donate here. We’re back for another look at things that – believe it or not – did NOT suck in 2025. Specifically: new state laws from around the country aimed at protecting...
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How to pick health insurance — in the worst year ever
Hey, first! If you value what we do, this is the best-ever time to support our work: This month, every donation gets matched two-for-one. We have SO much work ahead in 2026. Donate here — and get your money matched two-for-one. It’s probably fair to say: this is the worst year ever for picking...
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Some things that didn’t suck in 2025 (really)
Hey, first! If you value what we do, this is the best-ever time to support our work: This month, every donation gets matched two-for-one. We have SO much work ahead in 2026. Head to https://armandalegshow.com/support/ to donate — and get your money matched two-for-one. This statement might shock...
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This health economist wants your medical bills
Economist Vivian Ho has been researching the US health care system for four decades. These days she focuses on what she describes as the biggest burden on the average American: runaway hospital prices and rising health insurance premiums. (You know, Arm and a Leg stuff.) And she’s developed a...
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We love this listener’s project — and your response
A listener named Thomas Sanford wrote to us earlier this year, asking for help with a little DIY project. And it’s turned into the most encouraging thing we’ve seen all year. With input from the Arm and a Leg community — specifically folks who get our First Aid Kit newsletter — Thomas has drafted…
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Will we be able to afford insurance in 2026?
For the first time, our senior producer, Emily, has to sign up for Obamacare. And it turns out, it’s one heck of a year to do that. A recent headline from KFF Health News reads: “Insurers and customers brace for double whammy to Obamacare premiums.” We break down what those “whammies” might mean…
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The Insurance Warrior battles a $61 billion company (from 2021)
Hey first! We need your help: Financial help. Donations from listeners power this show, and we’ve got a goal: 100 people making their first-ever gift, this week. If you haven’t chipped in before, this is a great time — just click here. OK, onwards… Sharing a favorite from our archive – with…
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A wild health insurance hustle
When a New York couple purchased a health insurance plan from a telemarketer, everything sounded legit. Meds, doctors, tests? All covered. But it didn't take long for them to realize they'd been “hustled” – ending up with bills for thousands of dollars, and leaving them no choice but to skip...
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The great American drug shortage isn't an accident, it's artificial (from Organized Money)
As a follow-up to our series The Prescription Drug Playbook — all about how you can get the meds you need at a price you can (maybe) afford — we’re stepping back to look at the big picture. From the start of this podcast, we’ve been trying to answer a major question: Why do my meds cost so…
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The Prescription Drug Playbook, Part Two
In February, we asked you, our listeners, to share the tips, tricks, and tactics you’ve learned for getting the medicine you need at prices you can manage. And of course some of you work in health care and have insider knowledge. Which we’re passing along in this second episode of The…
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Trailer: The Prescription Drug Playbook
Too many of us get sticker shock when we go to pick up our meds. We asked our listeners how they get by in this situation, and we learned dozens of tips. And in this two-part series, we’re sharing those strategies — including some advice from experts. The next episode drops June 30. Support the...
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The Prescription Drug Playbook, Part One
In surveys, one in four Americans report having to skip their medications due to cost. We asked our listeners: what strategies have you used when you’ve been hit with pharmacy sticker shock? We heard from a ton of you – with stories, strategies and workarounds that surprised and encouraged us.…
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Could this mathematician’s formula fix US hospitals?
What do the KGB and the former CEO of Cincinnati Children's Hospital have in common? At different times, they’ve each looked to a guy named Eugene Litvak for help. He only said yes to Cincinnati — but he saved that hospital more than a hundred million dollars a year. For the last few decades,...
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A longtime expert puts 2025-so-far in perspective
With news blasting from Washington like a firehose, it feels impossible to take it all in — to stay on top of all the changes the Trump administration has been trying to make. But for health care, one person is probably closer to anyone than to understanding the full picture: KFF Heath News Chief...
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Why ‘The Pitt’ is our fave new drama
People who work in real-life emergency rooms have raved about how accurately the new drama The Pitt (Max) captures the dynamics and the medical details of their workplaces. Here at An Arm and a Leg, we’ve been nerding out about how the show depicts the financial forces that shape the ER’s...
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Winning a two-year fight over a bogus bill
A few months ago, we got a note from a listener named Meagan, who wanted to thank us. She said the stories she heard on this show had given her the advice and encouragement she needed to finally win a fight against a medical bill she didn’t owe — a battle she’d been waging for more than two…
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A medical-debt watchdog gets sidelined by the new administration
A federal agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — CFPB for short — has taken big steps to help people with medical debt. In early February, the Trump administration moved to effectively shutter the agency. We talked with credit counselor Lara Ceccarelli about how the CFPB has...
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Big news: Our ‘First Aid Kit’ newsletter is now weekly
Hey – real quick: some big news from the team at An Arm and a Leg. Our First Aid Kit newsletter is going weekly! First Aid Kit brings you advice from our show and more on how to survive and navigate America’s health care system. And allow us to introduce First Aid Kit’s new writer, Claire...
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How do you deal with wild drug prices?
We’re kicking off a new reporting project about how much we pay for our medicine — and what we can maybe do about it — and we want to hear your stories. Because: Getting a case of sticker shock with a prescription happens all the time. So we’re asking: What have you done — or tried to do — to get...
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The ‘Shkreli Awards’ — for dysfunction and profiteering in health care
You remember a guy named Martin Shkreli? If his name rings a bell, it’s probably because back in 2015, he jacked up the price of an old drug — from around $13 a pill to $750. The media dubbed him “the pharma bro,” and he became a symbol of brazen pharmaceutical greed. Now, he’s the namesake for…
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This is An Arm and a Leg
An Arm and a Leg is a show about why health care costs so freaking much, and what we can (maybe) do about it. New episodes every three weeks. Support the show: https://armandalegshow.com/support/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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A listener fighting the good fight
A few weeks ago, a listener sent us a note with a link to a news article about a new resolution that had recently been adopted by the American Medical Association – the largest group representing doctors in the US. The resolution said: hospitals need to do more to guarantee charity care to…
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Revisiting ‘Christmas In July’
Today we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes from the archive – a story about giving – and bringing you an update. In 1980, a young father named Denny Buehler was battling leukemia and needed to travel from Cincinnati to Seattle for treatment. To raise the money, his friends and family…
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New lessons from the fight for charity care
Longtime listeners to this show know we’ve been talking about something called “charity care” for years. Federal law requires that all nonprofit hospitals have charity care policies – that is, financial assistance policies — to reduce or remove people’s medical bills. The problem: people don’t…
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Fight health insurance — with help from AI
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…
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Can racism make you sick?
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.....
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Special Feature: A Beloved Nursing Home, from “To See Each Other”
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,...
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“Baby steps” in the fight against facility fees
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,...
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Anatomy of a Fall: One rural hospital’s ransomware story (from Click Here)
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...
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Don’t get “bullied” into paying what you don’t owe
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...
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We want to see your hospital bills
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...
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The woman who beat an $8,000 hospital fee
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...
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Coming soon: your stories on facility fees
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....
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Meet the Middleman’s Middleman
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...
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Staying on Medicaid seems tougher than it should be
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…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
An Arm and a Leg is 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 distributed in partnership with KUOW.You can support An Arm and a Leg by donating at armandalegshow.com/support/Show Credits: Created, hosted, and produced by Dan Weissmann with senior producer Emily Pisacreta and engagement producer Claire Davenport, edited by Ellen Weiss. Audio wizard: Adam Raymonda. Music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations. Lynne Johnson is our operations manager.
HOSTED BY
An Arm and a Leg
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does An Arm and a Leg have?
An Arm and a Leg currently has 171 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is An Arm and a Leg about?
An Arm and a Leg is 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...
How often does An Arm and a Leg release new episodes?
An Arm and a Leg publishes regularly with 171 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to An Arm and a Leg?
You can listen to An Arm and a Leg on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts An Arm and a Leg?
An Arm and a Leg is created and hosted by An Arm and a Leg.
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