Hey there. In Chicago, an essential worker named Jamie Gentry did something a lot of folks have

been doing recently. She opened a gazillion browser tabs and scoured them all to find a coated

vaccine appointment. It was just this whole series of refreshing, refreshing, refreshing all day

into the evening. She finally found one at an urgent care clinic. She jumped on it, then realized

she'd accidentally booked two spots with them. So she called the clinic to fix it. And that's when

they told her, oh, hey, uh, by the way, we'll be doing a, uh, 15 minute consult before your shot

and, oops, oh, we don't take your insurance. So that console's going to be, uh, 300 bucks. Or

they said, you could take advantage of our special. It would be $200 instead of the $300,

but then I would have to pay it up front in order to get the shot. Yep. Enter Mariah Wilful,

a reporter for WBEZ, the local public radio station. Mariah got Jamie's story and she called

a state health official to say, hey, is this even allowed? And the official was like, uh, no,

not really. Providers get the Vax for free. They're supposed to work out any administration fees

with an insurance company or from the government. She told Mariah, we've got a hotline to report this

kind of thing, okay? Could you let people know? She told Mariah she had already gotten 40 to 50 calls.

And this is before Mariah and WBEZ put the whole thing on blast. After Mariah's story came up

like that same day, the clinic's medical director emailed Mariah to say they were going to give

refunds to the 20 or so other people. They've already charged. She wrote, this is 100% our bad.

Great. One down. How many more to go?

This is an arm and a leg, a show about the cost of health care. My name is Dan Weisman. I'm a reporter

and I like a challenge. So my job on this show is to take one of the most enreging, terrifying,

depressing parts of American life. And I know we're still in kind of a take your pick situation

here, but the cost of health care, it definitely looks like a container and bring you a show that

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