Something's coming, something good.

An Arm and a Leg

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey there— our next story is gonna take a little more time to cook, but it is going to be SO worth it.

It involves John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars — and yes, we've got an interview with him — and a global fight against multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

... which turns out to be directly related to fights over the prices of drugs like insulin and humira in this country.

Meanwhile, let me recommend a story from ProPublica that's related to a story we did here a few months ago.

You might remember our recent episode about United HealthGroup, and how it's become a behemoth in recent years. That story started with a complaint from a doc in New York.

... who had a lot more tips than I could run down — or fit in one episode — and they weren't all just about United.

ProPublica's Cezary Podkul took the time to verify a big one: About zillions of dollars in fees that docs are paying — dollars that ultimately come out of our pockets — just to get paid.

Oh, and: If you aren't getting our First Aid Kit newsletter, this is a great time to sign up. We've started a series about how to fight with insurance that, unfortunately, a lot of us are gonna need at some point.

We'll be back in a few weeks, with John Green, TB, and the fight over drug prices.

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

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

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. I had a story in mind that I thought was going to be both an incredible story and kind of
0:05.9	a light lift and it turns out I was right about one of those things. It's going to be an amazing
0:11.2	story, but it is a bigger story than we thought. More complicated than I knew in more ways than one
0:18.4	and we're going to need some more time to dig in. So I'm going to ask you to come back in a few
0:22.8	weeks for that. Meanwhile, may I recommend a story from the good folks at ProPublica,
0:28.1	one that's related to a story we did here a few months ago. You might remember we talked recently
0:33.5	about United Health Group, which has grown into a behemoth in recent years and that story started
0:39.2	with a tip from a doctor in New York named Alex Steinslaker. He had gotten an offer from a
0:44.5	United subsidiary, a line of credit to help with his cash flow or as he called it a payday loan
0:51.1	at a steep interest rate, which he thought was pretty rich since a big reason doctors have trouble
0:57.3	with cash flow is that insurers like United Health Care, the way paying them. In other words,
1:02.8	sounded like a payday loan from your boss. Oh, I'm going to pay you late, but I could loan you the
1:07.4	money and keep a little interest for myself like 35%. Here's how Dr. Alex Steinslaker responded to
1:14.9	that. That's an incredible business plan. You have to be really creative to come up with that
1:21.2	business idea. You also have to have steel bowls to actually propose that publicly.
1:29.6	And as you might recall, when we dug in, that story checked out. But when I talked with Dr.
1:35.5	Steinslaker, he had a lot of other allegations too. For instance, that insurers were doing something
1:40.3	that seemed illegal, but the feds didn't have any process for taking complaints about it.
1:45.2	And I would ask him things like, do you have any documentation that you could share about that?
1:50.1	I probably do. I would love to see that. But you know what? I didn't follow up because
1:56.1	I'm just one guy and Dr. Alex Steinslaker had more tips that would need to be backed up with a ton
2:01.7	of reporting than I could possibly run down. But now, somebody has run down at least one of them
	...

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