Some more things that didn’t suck in 2025

An Arm and a Leg

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey, first! If you value what we do, this is the best-ever time to support our work.

We have SO much work ahead in 2026. Donate here.

We’re back for another look at things that – believe it or not – did NOT suck in 2025.

Specifically: new state laws from around the country aimed at protecting people from things like medical debt, insurance delays and denials, and corporate profiteering.

In this episode, we dive into two examples from opposite sides of the country to look at how laws like these get made – and in some cases, defended.

In Maine, lawmakers unanimously voted to remove medical debts from people’s credit reports. While a nationwide court ruling raises questions about the new law’s future, we’ll hear why consumer rights attorney Chi Chi Wu remains optimistic.

And in Oregon, a law aims to prevent big corporations and private equity firms from taking over medical clinics and strip-mining them for profits.

Plus, a good-news update from our team at An Arm and a Leg.

Here's a transcript of this episode.

Send your stories and questions! Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Strong communities and strong local news go hand in hand.
0:04.9	KUOW is a public good that keeps this community informed and connected.
0:10.0	Your support is critical to our work.
0:12.4	Don't wait.
0:13.2	Join KUOW's winter fundraising drive early and make a difference today.
0:17.7	Give now at KUOW.org or on the KUOW app.
0:22.4	Hey, before we start real quick, if this show has ever made you laugh or cry, maybe at the
0:28.2	same time, or help you out in a concrete way, now is your chance to help us keep doing all of it.
0:34.8	Donations from listeners like you have been our biggest source of funding,
0:38.5	and the more you help us right now, the more we can do in 2026. And you know there's going to be
0:44.2	so much for us to do. Just go to arm and a leg show.com slash support. Thank you so much.
0:50.7	Okay, here's the show. Hey there. It has been a long year. And yeah,
0:57.8	2026 is shaping up to be a doozy. I mean, as I record this, it is looking like any hopes
1:04.4	that Congress will extend certain Obamacare subsidies for next year. You're looking like a long
1:09.4	shot. And experts say millions of people could
1:12.3	lose insurance coverage. And, you know, not to rub it in, but the federal government actually
1:17.8	backtracked this year on another issue we've been talking about on this show, keeping medical
1:22.3	debts off of people's credit reports. The Biden administration spent years crafting a rule to
1:27.3	establish that protection,
1:28.5	and the Trump administration has actually said recently, those protections are illegal.
1:34.5	But states have been enacting laws of their own this year, which means lots of people are still
1:39.6	protected. And so this is where we pick up the series we started a few weeks ago, looking at things that did not suck in 2025.
	...

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