You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

You ever get to the pharmacy to pick up some drug that your doctor says you need?

And you wait in the line, surrounded by people who are coughing and sneezing.

And you're hungry, because you just got out of work, and you're ready to be home already.

And then the pharmacist rings up your drug, and it's going to cost, pardon me?

How much?

See, you expected it to cost 20 bucks, but instead it's 170, or 500, or a thousand.

And you're like, you know, what do I do?

What am I supposed to do?

Dan Weissman is the host of the podcast, an arm and a leg.

It's a podcast about why healthcare costs so freaking much and what we can maybe do about it.

Earlier this year, Dan heard a story from Wisconsin about a young guy named Cole Schmidt-necked.

Who had asthma and showed up at his pharmacy one day to get the inhaler that he used to just kind of maintain.

And he'd been using it for years.

And they were like, okay, that's $500, which he was not expecting.

I think he was expecting to pay something like $70.

And he just walked away.

Like he had no idea what to do. And within a couple weeks, he had a big asthma attack and

he died. His parents filed a lawsuit against the pharmacy and the pharmacy benefits company.

Because they were like, somebody should have told him that like this specific medicine,

the deal had changed under his insurance and it was no longer covered and it was going to be

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