COVID tests are free, except... when they're not
Anna's insurance company said it would pay 100 percent for COVID-related testing. And then they left her to pay a giant bill.
She got help, thanks to a viral tweet, but... her story exposes big loopholes in consumer protections. We learn how to avoid falling in.
And: The way people responded to her tweet was generous, moving, and... complicated. Uncomfortable. Weird. Even with everybody doing their absolute best. (And, we should say, with as happy an ending as any of us get these days.)
Anna's story gets right to the heart of some of the really weird ways that dealing with the cost of health care — ESPECIALLY in the world of COVID-19 and the Internet and everything else — just messes with our minds, and our relationships as humans.
Thanks to Carmen Heredia Rodriguez, who reported the story of Anna's bill for Kaiser Health News and kindly let me piggyback on her hard work! You can read her version at.https://khn.org/news/bill-of-the-month-covid19-tests-are-free-except-when-theyre-not/.
Send your stories our way: https://armandalegshow.com/contact/
And support our work: https://www.patreon.com/armandalegshow
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More episodes from An Arm and a Leg
A ‘payday loan’ from a health care behemoth
When a New York doctor tweeted recently about “payday loans” for doctors from a branch of UnitedHealth Group — which operates the giant insurance …
Mental health ‘ghost networks’ — and a ghost-buster
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 …
A $229,000 medical bill goes to court
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 …
A doctor’s love letter to ‘the People’s Hospital’
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. …
Lessons from “wrestling with a giant”
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.
…
The bill looked like BS. So she took it to small claims court.
“I sued a hospital in small claims court and lost — here’s what I learned.” That was the subject line for an email we got from listener Lauren Slemenda.
She wrote: “I feel like I won” — and …
How you can listen to this podcast
You can listen to episodes right here on the website, or if you prefer, in a podcast app. Listening in an app makes it easier to keep track of what you’ve already heard, listen without using your data plan and many other conveniences.