Winning a two-year fight over a bogus bill

An Arm and a Leg

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

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A few months ago, we got a note from a listener named Meagan, who wanted to thank us.

She said the stories she heard on this show had given her the advice and encouragement she needed to finally win a fight against a medical bill she didn’t owe — a battle she’d been waging for more than two years.

As Meagan tells us, those two years were filled with wild twists and turns and a lot of disappointment.

We hear what kept her motivated and encouraged despite all the setbacks – and after an insurance rep pointed her to a free legal resource — the tactic that finally led to a breakthrough.

Here’s a resource we mention — with a spoiler alert: It’s the sample cease-and-desist letter that a lawyer shared with Meagan.

We’ll break down the details — how a letter like this could work, in certain situations — in a future First Aid Kit newsletter.

Here’s a transcript of this episode.

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

Of course we’d love for you to support this show.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. A few months ago, we got a note from a listener named Megan in California, and it started like this.
0:07.7	Last month, I successfully had a provider pull back a bill from collections and stopped billing me for an ER visit from July 2022.
0:17.3	Megan was writing us in the fall of 2024, so that bill did not get resolved until more than two years after that ER visit.
0:25.3	And Megan, she wanted to thank us.
0:28.3	Her note said she picked up some tactical advice, but she said the show had really helped her keep going.
0:34.1	Here's how she put it when we talked with her.
0:36.1	I could listen to the podcast and kind of
0:38.7	hear some community and say, I'm not alone. This is a possible thing, right? Of course,
0:44.9	Megan's story is epic. And because parts of it are personal, she's asked us not to use her full name.
0:50.7	This tale has some comically wild twists and some important tactical lessons and it's
0:58.0	Megan's reflections on the whole journey that I especially want to share with you.
1:03.7	This is an arm and a leg, a show about why healthcare costs so freaking much and what we can
1:08.3	maybe do about it. I'm Dan Weissman. I'm a reporter and I like a
1:11.5	challenge. So the job we've chosen on this show is to take one of the most enraging,
1:16.5	terrifying, depressing parts of American life and bringing you something entertaining,
1:20.7	empowering and useful.
1:26.1	July 28th, 2022 was a Thursday.
1:29.9	Megan woke up to a brand new experience, Vertigo.
1:35.0	Nausea, dizziness, the works.
1:38.6	I just couldn't see straight, couldn't stand up, basically made it to the bathroom, and laid on the bathroom floor for like four hours.
1:45.4	She called in sick to work, waited to feel better, but she didn't.
1:50.4	And she got frightened.
	...

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