Hey there, if you've listened to this show for a while, you might remember our pal, Jared Walker,

and if not, you should meet him. He is the guy who went super viral on TikTok with a 60-second

recipe for crushing medical debts, starting with the fact that non-profit hospitals,

that is, most US hospitals, are required to have financial assistance or charity care policies.

This is going to sound weird, but what that means is that if you make under certain amount of

money, the hospital legally has to forgive your medical bills. That video got seen about 10 million

times in its first few days and a lot more after that. And at the end of it, Jared offered to

help folks apply, and two things happened. One, he got a ton of requests for help. And two,

he got a bunch of super smart, super committed volunteers to help him provide that help.

That was last year. Those volunteers helped Jared build a whole system for getting people help

quickly. And Jared started holding open trainings on Zoom, teaching people how to help other

people apply for financial assistance. It was all super impressive to watch.

And all of that would be a lot, but this year, he's launched into something potentially bigger.

A grant let him hire a couple people for another project to help people they hadn't been able to

help before. And honestly, so far, this new project has been harder than they thought.

But they're learning a ton along the way, and some of what they're learning is immediately useful

for us. So let's go. This is an arm in a leg, a show about why healthcare costs so freaking much,

and what we can maybe do about it. I'm Dan Weissman. I'm a reporter, and I like a challenge.

So our job on this show is to take one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing parts

of American life, bringing something entertaining, empowering, and useful.

Here's Jared's new project. He figures about a third of people in the U.S. could qualify for the

type of financial assistance from hospitals he's been focusing on so far. There's income cutoffs.

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