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 cardinal rule of the American healthcare system — “never pay the first bill.” 

It’s a lesson we first heard from the journalist Marshall Allen, whose 2021 book Never Pay the First Bill serves as a how-to guide for anyone facing down a potentially bogus medical bill, and whose passing earlier this year left a giant hole in the hearts of many. 

This episode is an extended version of a recent installment of the NPR and KFF Health News series Bill of the Month. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

Of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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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 their hospital bills reduced or even forgiven through charity care — but of course nowhere close to 60 percent of people actually get that assistance. 

A lot of people just don’t know about it. (A survey our friends at Dollar For ran last year found that more than half of patients who might qualify for charity care had never even heard of it.)

Which raises a question: How exactly are hospitals telling you and me about charity care — you know fulfilling their legal obligation to let us know we just might qualify to have our medical bill forgiven? 

This is where you come in: we want to see a LOT of bills from hospitals. If you got one any time in the last year would you please you share it with us here? 

Even if you weren’t worried about how you’d pay — we just want to see what your hospital was saying about your options (like payment plans vs charity care). We want to see what’s in bold type and what’s in fine print.

And if you were at all worried about how to pay, we’d like to hear the story. Did anyone mention charity care to you? Or what? And how’s it going? 

We also need your help spreading the word to friends and family. Spread the word to your friends and family, share our form with them. 

Finally, if you’re looking for charity care support, or just to see if you might qualify, you can go to Dollar For’s website and use their screening tool to see if you’re eligible, and their team of amazing volunteers can take it from there. And you can find more information on charity care in our First Aid Kit newsletter.

That’s all for now. Here's a transcript of this short episode. We’ll be back with more new episodes in a few weeks. 

In the meantime, you can send us other stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

Of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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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 “insulin correspondent” Emily Pisacreta took a hard look at the recent developments. 

Plus, what does the explosion of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have to do with the price of insulin? We break it down. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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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, despite making tidy profits. 

The hospital even sued its own badly-paid employees — a fact Thomas said was immediately visible just by visiting the court house. “You saw them, there, in their scrubs,” she said. “I could see their [hospital] badge clipped to the front of their uniforms.”

The injustices were stark. “The defendants are just outmatched,” Thomas said. “They don't have the resources of a billion dollar hospital with its own collection agency and attorneys.”

Thomas did such a good job making a stink about it that after a couple of months, the hospital dropped more than 6,500 lawsuits, and erased the debts.

“Shame is a powerful motivator,” said Thomas. “It just is. And the hospital didn't look good, so they had to address it.”

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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 — and then threaten you with a late fee of more than $1,000??

On this episode, we go find out.

This was fun. We'll do it again. Next time you want to know, Can They Freaking DO That?!? ... get in touch.

Also: We get into a whole story in this episode about "surprise billing" — and as we were publishing this episode, news was breaking. We've got an update at https://www.patreon.com/armandalegshow

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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, fat bill to get Cameron’s knee stitched up — and ultimately failed.

For instance, she took Cameron first to a local urgent-care clinic, but was told they didn't have anesthetic. So it was off to the ER.

Before signing anything, Sarah asked what it might cost and pressed hard — but got only squishy answers.

She ended up liable for $3,000 in charges. If only she had known.

“I would've said thank you very much. And walked out and gone back to our lovely urgent care and been like, 'Cameron, bite on this stick.'”

Her adventures make an entertaining parable, and they raise a big question: In a health care system where consumers are told to "shop" for the best deal, why is it so hard for us to get the information we need?

On this episode, we get some answers, thanks to a super-insider and straight shooter: Lisa Bielamowicz, a doctor who now runs Gist Healthcare, a consultancy firm where hospitals are the clients, gives us the dirt.

We'd love it if you support this show on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/armandalegshow

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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 history of the U.S. health care industry.

Welcome to our musical episode! And thank you to the young NYC troupe Heck No Techno for creating Explanation of Benefits.

Our episode isn't sung all the way through — it's more like the PBS documentary on Hamilton than an actual musical of its own. But that is still. Pretty. Darn. Cool. 

AND: In keeping with our theme this season of self-defense against the cost of health care, Explanation of Benefits wraps with a set of short vignettes demonstrating ways patients can work to protect themselves from excessive charges.

So we have included here an email-by-email breakdown of songwriter Emily Lowinger's successful battle to fight off a surprise medical bill.

... and we've set it off with music — timing and cues lovingly adjusted by our audio wizard, Adam — and it is a TREAT.

Go enjoy. Have a great Thanksgiving!

... and speaking of thanks: I recently spent a weekend afternoon sending thank-you cards to folks who support this show on Patreon. I'd love it if you became one: https://www.patreon.com/armandalegshow

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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. “Problems with competence, problems with greed and problems with maliciousness. And luckily most things are incompetence.”

She has saved herself and her family many thousands of dollars, and made a habit — even a hobby — out of helping others: Fellow diabetics, co-workers, and strangers on the Internet.

She's a health-care ninja. And she happens to be my neighbor.

Also in this episode: Our show's chief investor (and my spouse) applies some ninja-level negotiating skills to save our family more than $700 on a lost medical device. Around here, that's what we call romantic.

Thanks to our supporters on Patreon! We'd love it if you became one: https://www.patreon.com/armandalegshow

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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 Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful, a memoir about grieving her brother, Harris Wittels, a writer for TV comedies like Parks and Recreation, who died of a heroin overdose.

... and she is the host of the new podcast Last Day, which uses her brother's story as a starting point for a deep and smart and very-human look at the opioid crisis. Highly recommend: https://www.lemonadamedia.com/show/last-day

P.S. This podcast, An Arm and a Leg, is a finalist for a very-strange, very-approriate award: Best True Crime show of 2019. Because not all crimes are against the law. Let 'em know: Go vote for us right now — voting closes November 18: https://awards.discoverpods.com/finalists/

Also: We'd love it if you support this show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/armandalegshow

Thanks!

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It’s going to be REALLY fun. Also, maybe useful. Catch you here soon!

Also, here’s a little video preview.

Bonus news: Did you know we're nominated for an award as a TRUE CRIME show?

Almost too perfect. Everything on this show is legal, and that's the true crime. Here's a link — please pass it around!

Wanna share it with folks? Be our guest! Here it is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Vimeo.

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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 young children.

He’s not a modest guy, and two of his brags stand out — as a study in contrasts.

One is a quote from a board member that makes him sound like a big dreamer:

“People think of us as a medical organization. We’re not. We are fundamentally a peace and justice organization that happens to be engaged in our community through medical care.”

The other is the way he stands at his desk and nerds out on stats that show his clinic beating the pants off the competition, on preventive-care measures like screenings for cervical cancer, vaccination rates for two-year-olds, etc..

“OK, next: diabetes control,” he says. “Are you getting the idea here?”

At the heart of it, he says, is listening to people’s stories. The rest he calls “housekeeping.”

It’s not a fix for our whole broken system — you can’t just copy-and-paste what’s happening here — but it’s definitely pretty inspiring.

There’s a bit more in this write-up I did for our pals at Kaiser Health News.

But first! How about taking our listener survey?

It just takes a few minutes, and you’ll be helping us out a TON: https://armandalegshow.com/survey/

Thank you! You’ll be helping us get Season 3 made.

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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 ever: How to keep your cool in a tough moment, according to a self defense expert. 

In late 2020, Dan hit up self defense expert Lauren Taylor to get strategies for standing up for yourself, and hear how she’s applied her approach in her own fight for health care coverage. 

Since then, she’s published a book! It’s called Get Empowered: A Practical Guide to Thrive, Heal, and Embrace Your Confidence in a Sexist World. 

Extra tip: At the moment, the site bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores, has the best price.

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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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 doctors really listen to their patients.

He’s tallied up what doctors miss (a lot), and how much it costs (ditto). 

In today’s episode, we hear what actually happened in one of those “secret shopper” doctor visits — with the doctor and the actor who played his patient reading from the transcript of their visit, and then unpacking what went wrong.

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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.

The story Marshall wrote

opened up bigger issues about how insurance companies are collecting all kinds of data to use against us.

And it included at least one example of how the “little guy” can fight back sometimes, and win.

Extra fun: One of those examples features a 16 year-old Marshall Allen.

Marshall Allen, age 16, in his 1988 yearbook photo. (Photo courtesy Marshall Allen.)

Note: Eric curses a couple of times. We left it in.

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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 roof of the University of Toronto medical building, petting a dog they probably picked up from some shady character on the street … and whom they would soon sacrifice in the name of science. (Photo courtesy University of Toronto.)

We also found hopeful signs out there today, including the folks at the Open Insulin Project in Oakland, California, who are working on their own recipe for insulin, which they hope to share as widely as possible.

Anthony Di Franco holds a 3-D printed model of an insulin molecule at Counter Culture Labs in Oakland. (Photo courtesy Anthony Di Franco.)

If it sounds crazy — well, we talked with a listener who has hacked together an artificial pancreas from outdated equipment, raw computer parts, and open-source software, all with the help of her fellow “rogue, cowboy hackers,” who are growing in number. So, you never know.

Terri Lyman of Arizona shows off the home-made rig that regulates her blood-sugar and insulin levels according to her specifications. (Photo courtesy Terri Flynn.)

Meanwhile, activists with T1 International — an advocacy group run by Type 1 diabetics — are lobbying Congress, like the woman who leads off our story.

Adeline Umubyeyi, a T1 International activist, models a t-shirt from the group’s Washington, DC chapter president. (Photo courtesy Adeline Umubyeyi.)

They’re also organizing “caravans to Canada” (as our colleagues at Kaiser Health News recently documented with PBS News Hour) 

You will find a TON of details, links and resources in our newsletter. We’ve been told that even the sign-up process is pretty entertaining. 

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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 week, so you can take a break for the holiday, come back fresh, and be ready for something epic. See you then.

(If you’re new here, welcome! All our episodes so far are on our home page, or wherever you get podcasts. You can sign up for our newsletter , share a story, or check us out on Facebook and Twitter @armandalegshow.)

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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, what I actually learned was not a hundred percent cheerful.

We get these unpredictable prices thanks to companies that — surprise! — make a big profit from driving prices up. (They’re called “pharmacy benefit managers” — PBM for short.)

Theoretically, they work for insurance companies and employers who pay the premiums, and they’re supposed to keep drug prices down.

Economist Geoffrey Joyce used to think they did OK at that, but he’s changed his mind.

One thing that turned him around:

They got sued in several states, saying, ‘Hey, you should be acting in the best interest of your clients.’ And they’ve won in court saying, ‘No, we have no obligation to do what’s best for our clients. We do what’s best for us.’

So, not all sunshine. 

But: Feeling a little smarter about the whole thing? It’s a victory. Also kinda fun.

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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, changed providers… and got serious sticker-shock when she saw the bill for a scan: $1,600 — AFTER insurance.

So when she needed a follow-up scan, she shopped around — and found an option that set her back less than 90 bucks.

Which is great news, and useful — as far as it goes: As Liz points out, not everybody has six months to shop around.

But Liz’s experience isn’t even the craziest MRI-price-tag story we look at this week. Stick around for that.

Coming in to bat cleanup — to help us understand why these prices are so crazy, and so variable — is journalistic super-star, friend of the show, and my new colleague:

Elisabeth Rosenthal, editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News and author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. She breaks it down in an authoritative, funny, clear-as-glass way.

(Reminder: Kaiser Health News — our co-producers for this season — is not affiliated with the health care provider Kaiser Permanente. It’s a great story, and we’ve got it for you right here.)

This is the first of three episodes where we look at where health care prices come from. So this week it’s MRIs.

Next up: Prescription drugs. 

And then: Insulin. Yep, we are going there.

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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 — and there’s no non-scary way to say this — stuck his finger in a table saw.

Even more scary: He didn’t have insurance. “I don’t know which was worse. The pain in my hand, or the fear of: What is this going to cost me?”

Spoiler alert: The emergency-room didn’t charge him full price.

This episode kicks off a series where we start asking: How did prices get so high to begin with?

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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…

• Following us on Twitter or Facebook?
• Becoming a Patron?
• Sharing a story?

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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!

Find Us Online

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

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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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 stories, is most of us.

And it comes with my big thanks for being part of this show’s community this year. You’re our reason for being, and our best sources.  

You’re also our biggest source of financial support, so I will ask one more time to pitch in now if you can. 

Thank you so much! We'll catch you in 2024.

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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.

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 Wizardy: Adam Raymonda (adamraymonda.com)
• Music: David Winer (wearefancymountain.com)

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

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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.

Find Us Online

• Website: http://armandalegshow.com
• Twitter:

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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.)

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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.

1. 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.”
2. 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.
3. 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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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
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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)

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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)

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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.

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

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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 and telling revealing, surprising stories. But the project’s big focus— since I’m in this mess too—is connecting and problem-solving, together.

You are not alone. We may be screwed, but we’re together. And if we want to get even a little bit less-screwed, we need each other. If nothing else, we can be good company to each other.

• We can have a good, dark laugh.
• We can offer each other empathy.
• We can sing hilarious punk-rock campfire-songs of rage at whoever turns out to be responsible.

So I’ll be looking to you, over time, to offer up your own stories— by sending in voice memo recordings (and email, and FB posts). Also, punk-rock campfire songs.

To start, I’ll be reporting out on stuff I’ve found out on my own— stories that help us get a little less scared and confused about the mess we’re in. Early episodes will:

• Pull back the curtain and show how the dark machinery works. A simple leg brace shows how insurance companies allow— even encourage— crazy price gouging.
• Check out inventive hacks: Renaissance-fair workers have cooked up a creative, home-brew safety net.
• Tell some wild stories. Like one woman’s epic quest for health insurance. To keep her family out of medical bankruptcy, she made crazy sacrifices— and tweaked history.

Over time, you’ll tell me what needs finding out.

We can’t count on single-payer or some other big fix getting enacted and coming to save our butts anytime soon. (We don’t even have to agree on single-payer.

No matter what our politics, we’re all screwed right now.) But we need each other’s help and company RIGHT NOW, just muddling through the mess we’re in.

You know what? I think it’s going to be fun.

Meanwhile:

• Are you game to share your two cents about stuff we should do?
• Maybe you can support us with a donation to help get the show launched?

Thanks! Talk with you soon.

Till then… take care of yourself.

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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, with our partners at Scripps News and the Baltimore Banner. 

With those partners, we’ve dug up some surprising (and possibly uplifting) news about lawsuits in three states – Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — and what that news might mean for the rest of the country.  

This is part two of a two-part series. In part one, we examined the phenomenon of hospitals suing patients in bulk – sometimes hundred or thousands at a time – over unpaid bills. 

We learned that in many cases, those patients are struggling financially, and that the lawsuits aren’t very lucrative for hospitals anyway. So why did they happen in the first place? As one former collections industry insider told us, those decisions are “philosophically based.” 

In this episode — before getting to those surprising/hopeful findings — we try to understand that “philosophy,” perhaps best described as: business-as-usual. We speak with a former hospital billing executive and a representative from the third-party collections industry. 

This series is produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

… and supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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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 bills – sometimes even in bulk, by the hundreds or thousands at a time. 

Many of the patients getting sued are already facing financial hardship, or like one couple we interviewed, already in bankruptcy. 

Judgments against patients in these suits can be life changing. But according to experts, these lawsuits don’t recoup a ton of lost revenue for hospitals. So why do they happen? And what if hospitals stopped doing it completely? 

In this episode, we talk to a former sales rep for a medical-debt collections agency — who now steers hospitals away from efforts to collect money, via lawsuits or other means, from folks who just don’t have it.

He tells hospitals: This is better for your bottom line. 

Stay tuned for part two, coming in two weeks. 

… and to preview some of what’s in it — plus a whole lot more excellent reporting — check out the Baltimore Banner’s story: Maryland hospitals stopped suing patients with unpaid bills. Will they start again?

This series is produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

… and supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

OOH: And don’t forget. It’s prime time to make a donation and support this show. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode.

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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-minute comedy, is terrific. 

Ellen and Dru sat down with us to go over how they made the whole thing happen, and how this year’s Hollywood strikes changed their perspectives. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode.

ALSO: 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!

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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 or Your Life is the result of that research. 

Luke Messac sat down with us for a chat about how he got interested in medical debt, how medical debt became the massive problem it is today, and what he thinks people who work in health care can do to start to fix it.

ALSO: 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!

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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 asking for: Physician/comedian Will Flanary, AKA Dr. Glaucomflecken. 

His punchy videos satirizing the absurdities and cruel complexities of the American health care system have been a fan favorite for years among An Arm and a Leg listeners (and us too).

We’re sharing a delightful and moving conversation with Dr. G and his wife, educator Kristin Flanary (AKA @LadyGlaucomflecken online), from our pals at The Nocturnists, a podcast about the experiences of health care workers. 

As the Glaucomfleckens tell Nocturnists host Dr. Emily Silverman, the inspiration behind Flanary’s most biting videos. came from the couple’s experience dealing with health insurance after he suffered a near-fatal heart attack.

Check out the Nocturnists here or wherever you get your podcasts, and Dr. Glaucomflecken’s videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Send your stories and questions for An Arm and a Leg, or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we'd love for you to support this show.

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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 spanning multiple continents. 

All of it illustrates how pharma companies work the patent system to extend their legal monopolies on medicine way beyond the standard 20 years, and how that leads to high drug prices here and abroad. 

And what we can maybe do about it. 

This episode starts in 2004, when India began the process of changing its patent laws to align with global trade rules. Activists there managed to carve out exceptions to the law to prevent some of the worst patent abuses. 

Fast forward to this year, when those legal safeguards become key to unlocking new doors in the fight against TB. 

Meanwhile, the proponents of those Indian safeguards are here in the U.S., pushing for drug patent reform here. Which not only could help Americans, but also influence global standards. 

Here's a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we'd love for you to support this show.

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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 tuberculosis, and its price has been a huge obstacle to getting it to places it’s needed most — primarily places far away from the U.S.

But the reason this TB drug costs so much overseas is also one of the main reasons that important drugs here are so expensive — drugs like insulin, Humira and… well, just about everything:  

Legalistic patent games that pharma companies have mastered. 

So, in addition to John Green — and yes, we talked with John Green — we also talked with one of the world’s leading experts on drug-patent games, Tahir Amin.

Also, John Green is a great storyteller. So hearing him tell the story of how he became obsessed with tuberculosis is bittersweet.

And in order to make sense of any of this, we had to dig into the story of how John Green and his brother Hank became (and remain) YouTube superstars. 

For more than 16 years, they’ve been building a community of “nerdfighters” — nerds fighting to make the world a better place. It’s a profoundly sweet and fun story, and everything we’re trying to do here owes them a debt. 

Oh, finally:  This is, as you’re probably guessing by now, an epic story.  It’s gonna take two full episodes of An Arm and a Leg to tell it all.  

So, we hope you enjoy part one. There’s more coming in a few weeks.

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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 can maybe learn a thing or two from her.

More and more, people are noticing sneaky new fees like the one Georgann spotted. They’re often called “facility fees,” and they’re kind of like a cover charge for walking through the door. 

Hospitals say these fees go toward overhead on facilities with lots of specialized equipment —places like emergency rooms. But these fees have been increasing in recent years — and becoming more common: As hospitals buy up doctor’s offices, patients are starting to see them tacked onto bills for routine trips to the doctor.

We asked you to send us stories about facility fees. We heard from a ton of you and learned so much. 

We’ve got lots of stories to share. And we’re starting with this epic tale — which also involves the biggest facility fee charge we saw in all your submissions. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

Of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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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 ProPublica that's related to a story we did here a few months ago.

You might remember our recent episode about United HealthGroup, and how it's become a behemoth in recent years. That story started with a complaint from a doc in New York.

... who had a lot more tips than I could run down — or fit in one episode — and they weren't all just about United.

ProPublica's Cezary Podkul took the time to verify a big one: About zillions of dollars in fees that docs are paying — dollars that ultimately come out of our pockets — just to get paid.

Oh, and: If you aren't getting our First Aid Kit newsletter, this is a great time to sign up. We've started a series about how to fight with insurance that, unfortunately, a lot of us are gonna need at some point.

We'll be back in a few weeks, with John Green, TB, and the fight over drug prices.

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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For a year and a half now, the No Surprises Act has protected patients from some of the most outrageous out-of-network medical bills. But Congress left something pretty crucial out of the law — bills from ground ambulances. 

We look at just how wild ambulance bills can be, with a story about three siblings who took identical ambulance rides — from the same car wreck to the same hospital — and got completely different bills. (Thanks to Bram Sable-Smith who reported the story for the Bill of the Month, a series from NPR and KFF Health News.). 

And we find out how ambulance bills ended up being so random — a story that takes us back to the 1970’s. 

Plus, what you can do if you get hit with an out-of-network ambulance bill:

• See if you can negotiate a better deal
• See if you might qualify for financial assistance. (Here’s some detailed guidance from Jared Walker of Dollar For.)
• See if you’re protected under state law. At least ten states have passed laws protecting some patients from surprise ambulance bills. Check here to see if yours is one of them. 

Want to share your thoughts on how Congress should deal with out-of-network ambulance bills? A federal advisory committee wants to hear them. You can email them here.

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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If you’ve been told your insurance won’t cover your meds — or that you’re gonna have to pay an arm and a leg for them — you’ve met a PBM: a pharmacy benefits manager. 

And: Experts say they play a big role in jacking up drug prices overall. 

But how, exactly? We took a deep dive.

This episode first went out in 2019. We’re bringing it back because PBMs are in the news these days: Congress is targeting them, in an effort to to be seen doing something about prescription drug prices. And PBMs’ sometimes-rival, the powerful pharmaceutical industry lobby, is flooding the airwaves with ads attacking them. 

There’s been a little news since 2019: Although Congress is still catching up, all 50 states have passed some laws pertaining to how PBMs work. We’ve got an update on that. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

Correction: A previous version of this episode misidentified the parent company of Express Scripts.

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A listener’s doctor wanted her credit card info up front — before her appointment. She wondered: Do I need to give it to them? We did too. 

After all, who wants the risk of being overcharged — and then having to fight for money back?

Experts gave us their best advice, including a couple of tricks to try, and a legal protection you may be able to rely on. 

Meanwhile, Elisabeth Rosenthal, senior contributing editor at KFF Health News, filled us in on the rapid growth of medical debt as a financial product, including specialized credit cards and financing plans pushed by hospitals and other providers.

They can come with steep interest rates, and (surprise, surprise) the terms aren’t always spelled out clearly. 

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been issuing reports, including a handy FAQ, but hasn’t taken enforcement action in a decade.

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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When a New York doctor tweeted recently about “payday loans” for doctors from a branch of UnitedHealth Group — which operates the giant insurance company UnitedHealthcare — we were intrigued.

Especially when we saw that the loan product — a “cash flow solution” for health care providers — was real.

The doctor’s tweet essentially accused UHG’s insurance arm of causing cash flow problems for providers in the first place, by denying claims and delaying payments — which echoes complaints we’ve heard over the years, and which the original tweet called “genius” — as in Evil Genius. When the boss who’s paying you late offers to front you money, at interest, to tide you over, it does sound like… a conflict of interest.

It turns out, because UnitedHealth Group is such a big, complex enterprise, it’s not quite that simple. 

But UnitedHealth Group’s size and complexity turns out to be the story. The company has grown into a “behemoth,” running the country’s biggest insurance company, and becoming the biggest employer of doctors, while also running big parts of the business-side back end for big chunks of the health care ecosystem. 

As one expert told us, “There's very little good news about what happens when these organizations. or these sectors of health care get bigger.” Costs and prices tend to go up, without a bump in quality.

And regulators, we learned, have struggled to keep up. 

It’s a wild ride with a sobering conclusion — and very much worth taking. 

As the expert who labeled United a behemoth wrote: “United has grown to its present immense scale largely without public knowledge.” Now we know. And knowledge is the beginning of power. 

BONUS TIP: This story reminded us of themes and insights from novelist, journalist, and activist Cory Doctorow, especially his recent book Chokepoint Capitalism and his recent essays about the “enshittification” of online life.

We also like Cory’s novels a lot, and have learned a ton from them. They’re often called science fiction, but the tech is usually present-day, or about a month into the future. His latest, Red Team Blues, is a smart, fun techno-thriller. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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For lots of people, trying to access mental health treatment — like a therapist or a psychiatrist —is nothing short of a horror story. You could even call it a ghost story.

A “Ghost network” is what researchers and journalists call it when your insurance plan offers a list of “in-network” providers that turns out to be bogus. 

Attorney Abigail Burman has studied this haunted phenomenon, and she’s become a part-time volunteer ghostbuster for people in her life. She’s here to share her tactics with us — including some key legal terms that can provide leverage.

Abigail has written up a guide to her strategy, and she’s given us permission to share it. You’ll find it — lightly edited, and with some additional insights from our talk with her, over on First Aid Kit.

Warning: No silver bullets here. It’s still really, really hard. But Abigail has definitely got some hard-won insights we can use. 

Here’s a transcript of this episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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Before her surgery, a hospital told Lisa French she would end up owing them $1,337. After insurance paid them — more than they’d expected — the hospital billed her $229,000. And sued her for it. 

Her case went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court. 

The questions before the court, and how they ruled, have potentially major implications for our legal rights when it comes to fighting unfair medical bills — and how some hospitals might be thinking about their next move. 

Here’s a transcript of the episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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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 country. Yes, really. 

That’s the pitch he makes in his new book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine. It’s a love letter to Houston’s Ben Taub hospital, and an argument for bringing Ben Taub’s model — efficient, innovative, and cheap —to the rest of the country.

And if that seems unlikely in today’s political climate, well: Ben Taub’s wild origin story was plenty unlikely too. 

That story takes us to the 1960’s, when Dutch novelist and playwright Jan de Hartog moved to Houston. He fell in love with the bustling, futuristic home of NASA and the Astrodome. 

But he also discovered the city’s dreadful underside: a neglected charity hospital where largely African-American patients are left to seek health care in unsanitary and unsafe — hellish — conditions. 

De Hartog and a group of Quaker volunteers waged a campaign to change that, and eventually found an unlikely ally who brought it over the finish line. 

The People's Hospital is a heck of a book. We might want to start a book group someday, just to talk about it. If you want to grab a copy, here’s a link. (Or: Audiobook, or ebook.)

Here’s a transcript of the episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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The ER visit was quick and uneventful. The bill was $1,300. Our listener decided to push back. He didn't win, but he learned a lot — and so did we. 

We had help, from an expert we met by visiting a Renaissance Fair — which we did in this very fun early episode. Kaelyn Globig, head of advocacy for the Rescu Foundation, is a medical-bill wizard, and no one has taught us more.

In this story, she teaches us how to find out what Medicare pays for a given procedure — here’s the guide she shared with us — and how to use that information. 

We also got advice on dealing with debt collectors — when it makes sense to file a dispute — from April Kuenhoff, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. 

She shared resources too. Here are sample letters — templates you can edit:

• To tell a debt collector that you are disputing a charge. 
• To demand verification of a debt they say you owe
• To limit their legal right to harass you. 

Here’s a transcript of the episode. 

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

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