Sarah Macsalka has seen the stories about how expensive an emergency room visit can be, even for a minor complaint.So when her seven year-old son Cameron gashed his knee on a weekend morning in June, the ER was NOT where her family headed first.In fact, Macsalka did just about everything she could to avoid paying a big... more
Meredith Balogh has spent years learning to navigate the financial side of the health-care system. She’s a type-one diabetic, she’s never had a lot of money, and for years she didn’t have health insurance.It hasn’t been easy, but she’s become a master. “There's only three things that you're fighting,” she says. “Proble... more
Stephanie Wittels Wachs has a daughter born with hearing loss, which is how she found out insurance didn't cover hearing aids for kids. Those start at $6,000 and only last a few years. Stephanie teamed up with a few other moms to change Texas law... and won.Stephanie is a terrific storyteller. She's the author of Every... more
You've probably noticed: The U.S. economy is crashing.Something you may not have noticed, that may sound really weird: Almost half of that economic devastation comes from just one sector.And that sector? It's health care.If that sounds completely backwards, it is. Except in the world of how we pay for health care in th... more
It would sound a LOT like Explanation of Benefits, which is a musical revue that actually played in New York City in 2019.... so it would feature a parody of "Bills, Bills, Bills" — the 1999 Destiny's Child hit —rewritten for the age of GoFundMe.And it would have smart, funny musical numbers tracing the long, sad histo... more
For our Season 2 finale, time for some inspiration.For 30 years, James Gingerich has run a super-effective clinic in Indiana, delivering great results at low cost — to high-need, low-income patients.James Gingerich stands in front of shelves holding books that Maple City Health Care Center distributes to families with ... more
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 ... more
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…... more
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 canc... more
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 the... more
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... more
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 ... more
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 OnlineWebsite: http://armandalegshow.comTwitter: http://twitter.com/armandalegshowInstagram: http://instagram.com/armandalegshowFaceb... more
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 ... more
It’s often possible to negotiate medical bills. It sounds hard — and it can be — but what if we got it down to a science? Mapped out all the moves ahead of time? Jared Walker and his team at the nonprofit Dollar For are running a big experiment to see if they can do just that. And we got to visit the lab. The folks at ... more
Thomas Fisher is an emergency room doc in Chicago. His book, The Emergency, is an up-close chronicle of the COVID pandemic’s first year in his South Side ER. It also zooms out to tell the story of his journey as a doctor: How his upbringing on the South Side fueled his desire to become a doctor. And how the realities a... more
Yep. This viral TikTok video's recipe for "crushing" medical bills is legally sound. And IRS filings from thousands of hospitals attest to $2.7 billion of crush-able debt from a single year— a number that experts say looks more like a floor than a ceiling. Of course, it'll take a lot of work to actually zap those debts... more
In a classic—and hilarious—David vs. Goliath story, Jeffrey Fox takes on a huge hospital over an outrageous bill, and wins.He's a bit of an expert in using small claims court to get satisfaction, and he's got detailed instructions for all of us.Here's his first lesson: The other side—no matter how big they are, and no ... more
Ryan Gamlin spent a decade working on the financial side of health care, before going to medical school. Now, as an anesthesiologist in Los Angeles, he’s on the front lines fighting COVID-19, an experience he describes as “scary, in a way that I never expected to be scared, going to work.”He was scared one day last sum... more
Lots of people have insurance plans that only cover them with certain places —providers, certain hospitals.But: in a COVID pandemic surge, who knows if you'd end up one of those places? And if you end up someplace else... then what?That’s the question we got from a listener named Becky in Minnesota. She's got a Bronze ... more
They say the problem with relying on journalists to embarrass providers into caving on crazy bills is, there aren’t enough journalists to go around. Fair. But sometimes journalists can scale up.In Memphis, reporter Wendi Thomas found that the city’s biggest hospital routinely sued its patients over unpaid bills, despit... more
A woman got a bill from a medical testing lab she’s never heard of, for $35. Then, a follow-up bill said if she didn’t pay up right away, that price was going up — WAY up: to $1,287.Which raises a question that comes up a LOT with medical billing: Can they freaking DO that?!?Can some random lab hit you up for money — a... more
Dr. Saul Weiner is a physician and researcher at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin)Researcher Saul Weiner has been sending fake patients — actors, wired for sound — into real doctors’ offices, to learn about what actually happens, especially: How well... more
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 Wonde... more
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 OnlineWebsite: http://armandalegshow.comTwitter: http://twitter.com... more