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An Arm and a Leg

This is Water, and it sucks. Let’s talk. (Season One, episode 1)

An Arm and a Leg

An Arm and a Leg

Documentary, Health & Fitness, Medicine, Society & Culture

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2018

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When I first started talking about doing a show about the cost of health care… everybody had a story. Including me. It’s like that famous speech by the writer David Foster Wallace called This is Water. It starts with a joke about two young fish swimmin...

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey there, I'm Dan Weisman. I'm a radio reporter.

0:03.5

Last year, I left a job. It broke my heart to leave. And there was this other thing that made it not just

0:09.3

heartbreaking, but terrifying. Freaking health insurance.

0:14.0

A little while ago, my wife and I had the talk.

0:17.0

So I've been doing some research on health insurance and here's what I have so far.

0:21.0

Oh yeah, I'm almost scared to know. I know, I know. My wife has

0:25.4

her own business. It's a one-person shop so keeping us insured has been my part of

0:29.2

the deal. So when I left that job I was like, crap, I may need a new career here.

0:35.0

Which sucked, because I loved being a reporter.

0:39.0

But I actually did these exercises from a career change book that was fun and they all pointed to like start a business

0:46.4

And I'm like no thanks I want a job like a real job one with health insurance

0:51.6

But then I did have this kind of crazy idea because there's this one story that I didn't see anybody else really addressing head on, not full time.

1:01.0

It was the story I was living in real time. The way the cost of health care runs our lives.

1:07.0

I mean, we hear a lot about the horror stories. Like that one where they charged the guy 100 grand after insurance. You hear that one? Yeah, me too.

1:14.7

And we hear a lot about the politics. Democrats say this, Republicans say that. But I mean the everyday

1:19.6

stories, like, wait, does my insurance cover this?

1:23.3

Stories, the random $500 blood test stories,

1:27.0

the I can't quit this horrible job stories,

1:30.3

those stories, and what's behind them, and what they're doing to us, all of us.

1:35.0

I decided to take a week, get it out of my system, have some conversations about

1:40.4

creating a show about the cost of health care, basically ask some friends to talk me out of it.

1:45.4

And they didn't, not quite.

...

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