The Medical-bill "Negotiation Lab"
An Arm and a Leg
An Arm and a Leg
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s often possible to negotiate medical bills. It sounds hard — and it can be — but what if we got it down to a science? Mapped out all the moves ahead of time? Jared Walker and his team at the nonprofit Dollar For are running a big experiment to see if they can do just that. And we got to visit the lab.
The folks at Dollar For caught our attention — and lots of other people’s—when they went super-viral on TikTok with a 60-second recipe for crushing medical debt by accessing charity care, financial assistance that most US hospitals are legally required to offer. That was early 2021.
Next, a group of whip-smart volunteers helped Dollar For develop a user-friendly system to help folks apply for that assistance. Dollar For also started holding open trainings on Zoom, teaching people the ins and outs of applying for charity care—and helping others to do so. They say their work to date has helped erase more than $18 million in medical debt.
But lots of people who can’t afford their medical bills don’t qualify for charity care. So Dollar For is trying something new: what they’re calling a “negotiation lab” for gaming out the best way to negotiate with hospitals and debt collectors.
We listen-in on one of Dollar For’s real-life negotiations with a debt collector and take notes.
- Here’s a transcript of the episode.
- Send your stories and questions: https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 ARM-N-LEG
- And of course we’d love for you to support this show.
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, if you've listened to this show for a while, you might remember our pal, Jared Walker, |
| 0:04.5 | and if not, you should meet him. He is the guy who went super viral on TikTok with a 60-second |
| 0:10.2 | recipe for crushing medical debts, starting with the fact that non-profit hospitals, |
| 0:14.7 | that is, most US hospitals, are required to have financial assistance or charity care policies. |
| 0:20.5 | This is going to sound weird, but what that means is that if you make under certain amount of |
| 0:24.4 | money, the hospital legally has to forgive your medical bills. That video got seen about 10 million |
| 0:29.2 | times in its first few days and a lot more after that. And at the end of it, Jared offered to |
| 0:34.0 | help folks apply, and two things happened. One, he got a ton of requests for help. And two, |
| 0:41.2 | he got a bunch of super smart, super committed volunteers to help him provide that help. |
| 0:47.1 | That was last year. Those volunteers helped Jared build a whole system for getting people help |
| 0:52.0 | quickly. And Jared started holding open trainings on Zoom, teaching people how to help other |
| 0:57.6 | people apply for financial assistance. It was all super impressive to watch. |
| 1:02.4 | And all of that would be a lot, but this year, he's launched into something potentially bigger. |
| 1:08.1 | A grant let him hire a couple people for another project to help people they hadn't been able to |
| 1:12.8 | help before. And honestly, so far, this new project has been harder than they thought. |
| 1:18.4 | But they're learning a ton along the way, and some of what they're learning is immediately useful |
| 1:23.3 | for us. So let's go. This is an arm in a leg, a show about why healthcare costs so freaking much, |
| 1:31.2 | and what we can maybe do about it. I'm Dan Weissman. I'm a reporter, and I like a challenge. |
| 1:35.8 | So our job on this show is to take one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing parts |
| 1:41.6 | of American life, bringing something entertaining, empowering, and useful. |
| 1:46.0 | Here's Jared's new project. He figures about a third of people in the U.S. could qualify for the |
| 1:54.1 | type of financial assistance from hospitals he's been focusing on so far. There's income cutoffs. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
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.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.