A listener asks: Could NOT having insurance be a better deal?

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s open enrollment for 2023 health insurance for lots of folks — a time when you might find yourself asking: what good is health insurance anyway?

One listener wrote to us about his son, a student with no income. Dad asks, If the son could get charity care (financial assistance) at his local hospital…. should he bother getting health insurance?

The big picture question: If you’re broke, and can’t get insurance from work, what are your best options?

The big picture answer: It totally depends!

Do you live in a state that expanded Medicaid?
What are the financial-assistance policies like at the hospitals around you?
What kind of health care do you know you’re going to need?

We had expert help here: Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, and . Jared Walker, founder of Dollar For, and a super-expert on charity care.

If you want to go deeper:

We did a three-part series on picking health insurance in our First Aid Kit newsletter. Start here.
An episode from last year explored some more dos and don’ts for picking health insurance.
In a 2018 episode, we talked with another listener — a “financial therapist” — who had her own deep questions about health insurance.

We’d love for you to support this show. Now is a great time to do it.

This month, every dollar you donate is DOUBLED, thanks to NewsMatch and the Institute for Nonprofit News. Holy cow, what a deal.

Here, go for it.

Here’s a transcript of this episode.
Send your stories and questions: https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 ARM-N-LEG

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there! Today's episode starts with a question from a listener named Tom Carches. He writes,
0:05.4	My son will turn 26 this month and will no longer be eligible to be on our health insurance policy.
0:10.8	He's a student and currently has no income. I can hardly believe I am saying this, but
0:16.2	until he has a job, wouldn't he be better off not having insurance and applying for charity care?
0:22.4	So charity care also called financial assistance. This is when a hospital
0:26.2	forgives your bill or part of it because you definitely cannot pay it. All non-profit hospitals
0:31.2	are legally required to have some kind of charity care policy, and Tom said all the hospitals
0:35.5	around him are non-profits. And so, I mean, I can hardly believe I am saying this, but Tom's
0:42.3	question seemed worth engaging with, because it's basically, if you don't have money and you don't
0:47.6	have a job, what's your best shot at getting health care? And I thought this could be a good
0:53.3	opportunity to do something I have dreamed of this show doing from the beginning. An audio
0:58.1	advice column like, you know, Savage Love or Dear Sugar or, you know, Car Talk. So, I brought
1:03.7	Tom together with a friendly, super knowledgeable nerd who I figured could address his question.
1:08.5	It was super fun and I learned a lot and there were some curveballs. You ready?
1:14.9	This is an arm and a leg show about why health care costs so freaking much and what we can maybe
1:19.4	do about it. I'm Dan Weissman. I'm a reporter and I like the challenge. So, our job on this show
1:24.2	is to take one of the most raging, terrifying, depressing parts of American life and bring you
1:29.1	something entertaining, empowering, and useful. And we're going to start with the conversation
1:33.7	where I brought together our listener wrote in and the nerd I thought could answer his question best.
1:41.2	Thank you both so much for joining me. Can I ask you each to introduce yourself? Tom,
1:45.3	can I ask you to go first? My name is Tom Carches. I live in Karrion, North Carolina.
1:51.0	And what else you want to know? Let's start there at Karrion. How about you?
	...

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