How to avoid a big bill for your COVID test: with Sarah Kliff of the New York Times

An Arm and a Leg

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2020

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

They're supposed to be free. And usually they are. But sometimes... things happen. Here's how to keep them from happening to YOU.

New York Times reporter Sarah Kliff has been asking readers to send in their COVID-testing bills. She's now seen hundreds of them, and she runs down for us the most common ways things can go sideways, and how to avoid them.

Here's Sarah's NYT story that inspired this episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This story idea actually came up when someone who is very temporarily uninsured was asking me,
0:06.0	hey, where should I get tested? And I was saying, okay, well, here's how I think about it and here's where I would go.
0:10.0	And then I realized like, oh, maybe I should share this advice with not just my
0:14.0	uninsured friend. That's New York Times reporter Sarah Cliff talking about her
0:20.5	recent story how to avoid a surprise bill for your coronavirus test.
0:24.8	I read it, tweeted about it, and realized like,
0:26.8	oh, maybe I should share this advice
0:28.3	with not just whoever happens to see my random tweet.
0:31.1	So, welcome to a bonus episode of an arm and a leg, a podcast about the cost of health
0:36.3	care. My name is Dan Weissman. I'm a reporter and I like a challenge. So my job here is to take
0:41.7	one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing issues in American life,
0:46.0	but you know, just one of them, and bring you a show that's entertaining, empowering, and useful.
0:51.6	And I think we've got you here.
0:53.8	I ask Sarah Cliff to help walk us through
0:55.8	what she's been learning because she ought to know.
1:01.5	So Sarah Cliff, thank you so much for joining me. You are covering health care and the
1:07.6	coronavirus pandemic at the New York Times and you're what you're doing now is like
1:11.1	a sequel to a project you did when you were at
1:12.8	Vox where you ask people to send you emergency room bills to get a sense of like
1:17.4	what goes on why are they so wildly high in so many cases and what actually happens.
1:23.6	We got more than a thousand bills there.
1:25.4	We talked about that a couple years ago.
	...

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