The “An Arm and a Leg” podcast is back. This season, host Dan Weissmann will tell stories about patients finding creative ways to fight back against outrageous bills.
This first episode of Season 9 updates a story from 2019 about a listener who got a $35 bill from a medical testing lab she had never heard of. Soon a follow-up bill arrived demanding $1,300 if she didn’t pay right away.
This jump in price left her wondering: Can they freaking do that?!?
The answer: They can try. And they often get away with it.
But if patients have the time and moxie, they can propose a fair price and even take providers to court to force them to accept the counter offer.
The original version of this story covered a couple of topics the show has explored: Surprise bills (for which new legal protections were enacted in 2022) and how private equity has been expanding into health care and how some doctors are trying to fight back.
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Transcript: Can They Freaking Do that?! (2023 Edition)
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Hey there–
I have to start with a big THANK YOU to everybody who supports this show. It’s January, we wrapped up our big fund-raising campaign at New Year’s, and more than six hundred of you came through for us. We hit all our targets, including our stretch goal. It’s huge.
I’ll have a LOT of people to thank at the end of this episode, and I want to think about how to celebrate. Thanks to you, this year is off to an amazing start.
And for this first episode of 2023, I’m going back to a story we first put out more than three years ago, in 2019.
Because: this story changed my whole conception of what this show can aim to do.
When I meet people today and tell them about An Arm and a Leg for the first time, this is the story I tell them about.
Because this is a story about legal rights I never sus …