How to avoid the crappiest health insurance.

An Arm and a Leg

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We kick off with a wild ride: How one journalist almost got roped into a scam.

While hunting for a new insurance plan, Mitra Kaboli got an offer that seemed too good to be true—but seemed to be coming from her current insurer. Mitra was skeptical, and it turns out, she had every reason to be. Dania Palanker from Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms unpacks this sketchy scheme, and gives us the key to avoiding it: When you're searching for health insurance... skip Google. Seriously.

Then, some top health insurance nerds teach us how to really shop for health insurance: where to find the fine print and how to read it.

They also deliver some good news (for once): Thanks to subsidies in the American Rescue Plan some deals this year are actually… deals! Meaning: health insurance got more affordable for lots of people this year. Here's the subsidy calculator we mention in the episode.

Want to read all of those tips in one place? Check out First Aid Kit, the newsletter where we're summing up all the practical stuff we've been learning since this show launched.

Here’s a transcript of the episode.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey there, Mietra Caboli is an audio producer and she has won awards for her journalism,
0:05.5	so she is skeptical for a living.
0:08.9	Just recently, she started looking for health insurance after a few years on an employer's
0:12.4	plan.
0:13.4	For the first time in a while, she logged into healthcare.gov.
0:16.0	And it's been really difficult.
0:18.9	I forgot what this is like.
0:20.9	And she thought she'd see if she could get a direct quote somewhere else.
0:24.0	I already have Sigma and so I thought I was on Sigma's website.
0:28.7	You know, I was like putting information to get a quote and I had to put in like my phone
0:32.5	number and the next thing I know I'm getting a phone call.
0:35.9	Just one?
0:36.9	Well actually, my phone's been re-off the hook for several days now.
0:40.3	But this first call, she took it.
0:42.3	The person on the other end was offering her a really good plan.
0:45.2	Actually, maybe a little too good to be true.
0:47.9	That was like red flag number one where I was like, no fucking way.
0:53.3	Except in the moment, remember, she basically thought she was getting a call from Sigma.
0:58.0	You let that question just sit for a while and she listened to the pitch.
1:01.6	It was basically something like $300 a month, which is less than half of what I'm paying
1:07.2	right now.
1:08.2	No deductible, unheard of.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from An Arm and a Leg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of An Arm and a Leg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.