The Insurance Warrior battles a $61 billion company (from 2021)

An Arm and a Leg

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey first! We need your help: Financial help. Donations from listeners power this show, and we’ve got a goal: 100 people making their first-ever gift, this week.

If you haven’t chipped in before, this is a great time — just click here.

OK, onwards…

Sharing a favorite from our archive – with lessons that are as relevant as ever.

Laurie Todd calls herself The Insurance Warrior. She fights health insurance for a living. Her speciality: writing appeals when insurance companies deny high-stakes, high-dollar treatments.

Her first victory was fighting to get coverage for her own life-saving cancer surgery – which we chronicled in an episode tracing her origin story.

Since then, she says she’s notched hundreds of other victories, and outlined her strategies in two books: Fight Your Health Insurer and Win and APPROVED: Win Your Insurance Appeal in 5 Days.

In this episode, we go deep on one of Laurie’s early, super-instructive cases, that taught Laurie one of the weirder truths about health insurance in America: fighting your health insurance often means fighting… your employer.

And in this case, that employer was a $61 billion company.

Want more about winning insurance appeals? Here’s our starter pack.

Here is a transcript of this episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support comes from Washington's National Park Fund, the official philanthropic partner of Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks.
0:09.2	Proceeds from Washington National Park license plates help fund important projects in these parks that might not otherwise receive support.
0:17.3	More at WNPF.org.
0:20.5	On the latest episode of Sound politics, shedding voters in popularity, Democrats have a big blue
0:26.7	branding problem. But Washington Dems say the party should look here for answers on how to win.
0:32.6	But does what works for voters here work for the rest of America?
0:36.6	Washington Democrat State Party Chair
0:38.4	Shasty Conrad joins the podcast to talk about trans rights, Gaza, and the charge that Democrats
0:45.0	annoyed America into fascism? That's on sound politics wherever you get your podcasts.
0:51.1	Support comes from Washington's National Park Fund, fundraising partner to Mount Rainier,
0:56.6	North Cascades and Olympic National Parks, with donor support WNPF funds research,
1:02.7	youth and volunteer programs, and projects designed to help keep parks strong and vital now
1:07.9	and for the future. More information at WNPF.org.
1:13.4	Hey, I need to ask your help, financial help. You know, 2025 has been a big year for us so far.
1:20.8	We took our first aid kit newsletter weekly. With help from your stories and insights,
1:25.3	we created a playbook for saving money on prescription drugs.
1:29.2	And we rolled out starter packs on our new website, guides for questions like, help, I'm stuck with a giant medical bill.
1:36.4	All while putting out a show, I hope you're finding, entertaining, empowering, and useful.
1:41.5	And here's the thing.
1:43.0	Donations from listeners like you, there are biggest source of
1:46.5	support. We are trying to raise $75,000 before the year ends. And if 100 people make their very
1:53.5	first donation to an arm and a leg by September 5th, we will be on our way. So let's do this. Go to
	...

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