Dan Weissmann
An Arm and a Leg host Dan Weissmann breaks down how two states handed legal guidelines geared toward defending individuals from issues like medical debt, insurance coverage delays and denials, and company profiteering.
In Maine, lawmakers unanimously voted to take away medical money owed from credit score experiences. While a nationwide court docket ruling has solid doubt on the brand new regulation’s future, a client rights legal professional tells Weissmann why she stays optimistic.
And a regulation in Oregon goals to stop companies and personal fairness corporations from gobbling up medical clinics, elevating costs, and, generally, delivering worse care.
Plus, the group behind An Arm and a Leg has some excellent news of its personal to share.
Dan Weissmann
Host and producer of “An Arm and a Leg.” Previously, Dan was a employees reporter for Marketplace and Chicago’s WBEZ. His work additionally seems on “All Things Considered”; Marketplace; the BBC; “99 Percent Invisible”; and “Reveal,” from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
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Emily Pisacreta
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Adam Raymonda
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Transcript: Some extra issues that didn’t suck in 2025
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” makes use of speech-recognition software program to generate transcripts, which can include errors. Please use the transcript as a device however examine the corresponding audio earlier than quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there–
It has been an extended 12 months, and sure, 2026 is shaping as much as be a doozy.
As I document this, it’s wanting like every hope that Congress will lengthen sure Obamacare subsidies for subsequent 12 months are wanting like an extended shot. Experts say tens of millions of individuals might lose insurance coverage protection.
And– to not rub it in– however the federal authorities truly backtracked this 12 months on one other problem we’ve talked about right here: Keeping medical money owed off of individuals’s credit score experiences.
The Biden administration spent years crafting a rule to ascertain that safety.
The Trump administration has truly stated just lately: these protections are ILLEGAL.
But states have been enacting legal guidelines of their very own this 12 months … which implies a lot of individuals are nonetheless protected.
And that is the place we decide up a collection we began a number of weeks in the past — taking a look at issues that DID NOT SUCK in 2025.
Cuz not solely did some states fill in holes left by the feds .Other states had been staking out new floor.
For instance, a brand new regulation in Oregon goes exhausting at a core cause why well being care retains costing extra on a regular basis:
Big companies and buyers maintain gobbling up an increasing number of medical practices— jacking up costs and (a minimum of generally) delivering considerably crummier care.
Oregon’s new regulation goals to slam the brakes on that.
In reality, a lot of states have completed a lot of issues that didn’t suck this 12 months.
A couple of weeks in the past, we checked out state legal guidelines that push again in opposition to some methods insurance coverage corporations delay and deny care.
And new state legal guidelines that shield individuals from getting their properties and their paychecks taken away due to medical debt.
Laws like these handed in a lot of states — crimson states, blue states, purple states. With bipartisan assist.
So did legal guidelines limiting intermediary corporations like pharmacy profit managers from jacking up what individuals pay for medicine. And legal guidelines limiting price-gouging by hospitals.
We’re digging into these few examples to take a look at how legal guidelines like this get made– and defended.
They take a mixture of political work and a few hard-core nerding out. And after they move, legal guidelines like Oregon’s turn into fashions different states can decide up on.
So, let’s go.
This is An Arm and a Leg– a present about why well being care prices so freaking a lot, and what we are able to perhaps do about it. I’m Dan Weissmann, I’m a reporter, and I like a problem. So the job we’ve chosen right here is to take one of the crucial enraging, terrifying, miserable, components of American life and produce you a present that’s entertaining, empowering, and helpful.
Of the half-dozen states that handed legal guidelines to maintain medical money owed from dinging individuals’s credit score, most of them look “blue” on a political map: New Jersey, Rhode Island, California.
But Maine is a bit more purple. And Maine’s regulation handed unanimously.
Here’s State senator Donna Bailey, who sponsored it.
Donna Bailey: I don’t keep in mind loads of heavy pushback, which was pleasantly shocking to me, fairly actually.
Dan: Surprising as a result of it’s not like simply saying “let’s help people with medical debts” ensures success in Maine.
Donna Bailey: We did have a invoice final session that didn’t undergo and didn’t have bipartisan assist.
Dan: Donna Bailey had sponsored that one too. This time, she was decided to win. When she campaigned for re-election, she promised to go for it. She says her earlier invoice had been extra sophisticated. This one had a single focus.
And when it got here up in committee, her colleagues heard some compelling testimonies.
Patty Kidder: We pay our mortgage on time each month. But due to unpaid medical payments, we had been unable to simply go purchase a brand new or used automotive when the engine blew in our solely working automobile…
Andrea Steward: I started accumulating my very own medical debt at 17 once I found, which I solely found on my credit score report, once I was making an attempt to buy my first dwelling in 2022…
Dan: But legislators additionally heard exhausting numbers. Fresh numbers, launched that very day
From a survey exhibiting that just about half of Mainers had been carrying medical debt.
A number of them wound up with dings on their credit score due to it. Which meant — as they stated within the survey — medical debt on credit score experiences was inflicting them actual issues.
Ann Woloson: It’s affecting their potential to get jobs. It’s affecting their potential to purchase a automotive. It’s affecting their potential to hire an residence. Something must be completed about it.
Dan: That’s the one that commissioned the survey.
Ann Woloson: I’m Anne Woloson and I’m govt director for Consumers for Affordable Healthcare, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group based mostly in Maine.
Dan: How lengthy has the group been round?
Ann Woloson: We’re gonna be celebrating our fortieth anniversary subsequent 12 months.
Dan: Wow. And you haven’t solved the issue of reasonably priced healthcare in 40 years.
Ann Woloson: Nope. Unfortunately. I suppose I’m not doing an excellent job. Right.
Dan: Well, there could be some countervailing forces.
Dan: Hearing the story behind this invoice, I don’t suppose Ann Woloson is unhealthy at her job.
For years, she’s convened a technique assembly on Thursday mornings at 9am. Consumer advocates, well being care advocates.
Ann Woloson: We used to fulfill on the State House pre pandemic, however now we meet over, we meet over Zoom slash phone. However. Whatever’s simple. Sometimes individuals are of their automotive.
Dan: She says in fall 2024, the group began waiting for the subsequent legislative session.
Ann Woloson: We had been beginning to speak about like what extra can we do with medical debt? And someone in all probability stated, nicely, I’ve been speaking to Senator Bailey and he or she’s fascinated with submitting a invoice to deal with the reporting of medical debt to collectors. And we’re all like, oh, that seems like a fantastic thought. That’s one thing we are able to get behind.
Dan: Ann Woloson discovered some cash in her funds to run a survey — like twelve thousand {dollars}.
Ann Woloson: Which perhaps doesn’t sound like loads, however for a small nonprofit, that’s a, that’s some huge cash.
Dan: I don’t have it in my pocket. Right? It’s cash.
Dan: Ann Woloson says: this was a strategic funding.
Ann Woloson: We will often hear from trade representatives that such and such. This will not be actually an issue. I don’t know the place that is coming from.
Dan: And they dismiss particular person testimony as a number of remoted hard-luck tales.
Ann Woloson: Well, right here now we have this survey that exhibits, yeah, medical debt is an issue. So it’s not simply one thing that we’re pulling out and saying is an issue.
Dan: Nobody voted in opposition to the invoice. Not in committee. Not on the Senate flooring, not within the House. It was a greater return on funding than Ann Woloson had hoped for.
Ann Woloson: So there was, I’d say, nearly a unanimous feeling on the market that one thing wanted to be completed about this. I wasn’t actually anticipating that.
Dan: State Senator Donna Bailey says she thinks — together with the survey — the Biden administration’s push on the problem helped. Partly as a result of it raised the problem’s profile.
And partly as a result of the precise rule– finalized simply earlier than Biden left workplace — could have left opponents pondering the stakes had been decrease.
Donna Bailey: Some politicians who could have been opposed, had been similar to, nicely, it doesn’t matter if we move one thing on the state stage. It’s already, , forbidden on the federal stage, so going to place their energies elsewhere.
Dan: On the opposite hand, advocates like Ann Woloson had been taking a look at one thing else: The 2024 election outcomes. Joe Biden could have pushed by this rule earlier than leaving workplace, however he was nonetheless… leaving workplace.
Ann Woloson: It was behind my thoughts and doubtless a number of different individuals’s minds, that had been engaged on this um, that we wanted to codify one thing in Maine in case one thing modified on the, on the federal stage.
Dan: Which in fact, one thing did. Within weeks of taking workplace, the Trump administration successfully shuttered the company behind the rule: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
By that point, the collections trade had already sued to invalidate Biden’s medical-debt rule.
The Trump administration ?didn’t do a lot to combat that lawsuit, and over the summer season a federal decide discovered the rule unlawful. Donna Bailey and her allies had been undoubtedly watching.
Donna Bailey: We’re like, wow. You know, thank goodness we put one thing in regulation on the state stage.
Dan: But there was a brand new potential menace. The decide who zapped the federal rule went farther.
In his ruling, he wrote that not solely did the Biden rule violate a regulation referred to as the Fair Credit Reporting Act– however that very same federal regulation would pre-empt state legal guidelines like Maine’s, and nullify them.
Then, a number of months later, in October, Trump’s CFPB issued its personal authorized opinion — principally elaborating on the decide’s reasoning, arguing that, yep: State legal guidelines like Maine’s needs to be tossed.
Which undoubtedly sounds prefer it sucks.
But right here’s the place issues get good and nerdy.
I don’t suppose anyone’s been pushing on this problem of medical money owed and credit score experiences longer — or nerding out more durable — than Chi Chi Wu. She’s an legal professional with the National Consumer Law Center. You’ve heard from her earlier than on this present.
She’s not thrilled in regards to the decide’s ruling, however she says it didn’t suck as a lot as information experiences on the time instructed.
Chi Chi Wu: The decide didn’t quote, unquote, rule that state legal guidelines had been preempted.
Dan: She makes use of a nerdy authorized phrase to explain the decide’s assertion about pre-emption: Dicta. Meaning, if I’ve acquired this proper, simply speaking. Not truly making regulation on this problem of pre-empting state measures.
Chi Chi Wu: It wasn’t central to the ruling. It wasn’t briefed. He didn’t do any evaluation. I imply, preemption underneath the Fair Credit Reporting Act is de facto sophisticated. Slightly bit head spinning. There’s some case regulation on the market and he didn’t contemplate any of it as a result of frankly the problem wasn’t actually earlier than him. So, that’s the half that didn’t suck as unhealthy as you may suppose.
Dan: Basically, Chi Chi Wu says, to do away with these state legal guidelines, plaintiffs must problem them in court docket, one by one. For the document, she thinks the arguments in opposition to these legal guidelines are weak.
Chi Chi Wu: But they push it. I imply, they push it they usually see if a court docket will purchase their arguments. They usually push theories that aren’t supported even by the textual content of the statute. And generally they get away with it, sadly. I imply, they’ve very costly attorneys that, , that is how they earn their large bucks by pushing the regulation as a lot as they will in favor of their shoppers.
Dan: I truly talked with a kind of high-priced attorneys just lately. Who was not prepared to say victory– or settle for defeat prematurely. She was like, “These things have to be litigated.”
Which in fact has began. Actually, in Maine.
But Donna Bailey says — based mostly on early proceedings in that case– she’s not anxious:
Donna Bailey: The fascinating half was that the court docket didn’t put any keep on the laws, so it was nonetheless allowed to enter impact.
Dan: That is, the court docket hasn’t granted a preliminary injunction, which might have prevented Maine from imposing the regulation whereas the case performs out. Which will take … some time.
And if courts do ultimately rule in opposition to states like Maine, Chi Chi Wu has legislative tweaks to recommend that might make state legal guidelines extra lawsuit-proof.
If you need to nerd out, we’ll have hyperlinks in our First Aid Kit publication.
But now, we’ll take a look at a state that got here out swinging this 12 months in a giant new combat:
Oregon handed a regulation to stop large companies and buyers from taking up medical clinics and principally strip-mining them for income.
That’s subsequent.
This episode of An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. That’s a nonprofit newsroom protecting well being points in America. These people are wonderful journalists. Their reporting wins every kind of awards yearly. We are honored to work with them.
Dan: In the spring of 2024, a information story broke in Oregon that ultimately drew nationwide consideration.
News anchor: You referred to as and we listened. We have been getting every kind of calls and emails from sufferers who had been dropped with none warning. It is our high story tonight. KEZI 9…
Dan: These had been sufferers at Oregon Medical Group, a sequence of clinics within the Eugene space. And these sufferers had simply gotten letters within the mail
News reporter: telling them their major care supplier is leaving the medical group and the necessity to discover care elsewhere.
Dan: Other sufferers solely acquired the information after they referred to as to make an appointment.
Over the course of a pair years, greater than thirty medical doctors had give up Oregon Medical Group — and left hundreds of sufferers stranded.
A health care provider at one space hospital instructed an area information outlet an increasing number of Oregon Medical Group sufferers had been beginning to present up on the ER.
Some of them simply wanted refills on prescriptions, since that their common medical doctors had been gone. Not fired, it turned out. Quit.
Ben Bowman: Those medical doctors left as a result of they didn’t agree with the way in which the follow was being run. This wasn’t what they signed up for after they went into drugs.
Dan: That’s Ben Bowman. He’s a democratic state rep from the Portland suburbs.
He says he’s talked with a few of these medical doctors personally. Others talked with reporters.
They stated they’d give up as a result of the follow modified after a takeover by Optum. That’s a reputation which will sound acquainted. Optum is a huge subsidiary of the even-more-giant UnitedHealth Group.
We’ve talked about Optum greater than as soon as on this present as a result of it’s acquired tentacles in nearly each a part of healthcare.
Including working medical practices. These days greater than 10 p.c of ALL medical doctors within the US work for Optum. More than for anybody else by large margins.
Optum took over Oregon Medical Group in 2020, and — as medical doctors later instructed reporters– it ended up making large adjustments. Doctors stated dictates from Optum had them spending much less time with every affected person, with extra sufferers to see, and, after Optum reduce employees, with a ton extra paperwork to grind by themselves.
To high it off, a minimum of a few of them stated they acquired socked with pay cuts.
But quitting their jobs meant really leaving their sufferers behind. Their contracts had non-compete clauses, so that they couldn’t simply see their sufferers elsewhere close by.
Ben Bowman: Some of them went to work in different areas. Some of them left the state of Oregon. Some of them had been so burned out. They stated they’re completed with drugs.
Dan: News experiences say as many as 10,000 sufferers acquired left behind. And right here’s why Ben Bowman was speaking with these medical doctors — and why he’s the man you’re listening to from:
By the time these tales hit the information, Ben Bowman and a few allies had already been preventing for greater than a 12 months to repair what he and others say is the foundation reason for what occurred in Eugene.
Which might be going to sound acquainted.
Ben Bowman: Over the final 10 to fifteen years, there’s been a speedy acceleration of company and personal fairness possession over medical clinics.
Dan: These are companies that owe it to their buyers to place income first. But well being care suppliers are supposed to place sufferers first.
Ben Bowman: Those two issues are inherently in battle generally and we get to resolve as a state: how are we going to resolve that rigidity? And in Oregon, we wish the reply to be that the medical doctors are making the choice that’s in the most effective curiosity of their affected person.
Dan: Ben Bowman’s saying “we get to decide as a state” and right here’s what “we in Oregon want the answer to be” as a result of this 12 months he and his allies received a giant legislative combat.
He talked about how they did it with this present’s senior producer, Emily Pisacreta.
Ben Bowman: This might be a for much longer story than you’re asking for, however,
Emily: No, I like it. I like it. It’s nice.
Dan: Emily? Really lengthy?
Emily: I promise not too lengthy. It begins with an mental puzzle.
Bowman might see that large companies and private-equity — PE for brief — had been taking up an increasing number of medical practices. All over, together with Oregon.
Ben Bowman: Now, right here’s the place it will get bizarre. Oregon, like many states, most states, has lengthy had a company follow of medication regulation on the books.
Emily: …that principally says, to personal a medical follow, you must have a medical license. An organization or group of buyers can’t get a kind of.
Ben Bowman: But on the identical time, we’re seeing this speedy enhance in companies and PE corporations shopping for clinics. How is that attainable if now we have a regulation that claims you may’t try this?
Emily: In 2023, Bowman learn an article within the New England Journal of Medicine that appeared to supply some solutions — and perhaps a blueprint for constructing stronger guardrails.
One of its authors is Erin Fuse Brown.
Erin Fuse Brown: …and I’m a Professor of Health Services, Policy, and Practice on the Brown University School of Public Health.
Emily: I met Erin again in 2022, once we checked out how personal fairness corporations had been shopping for up gastroenterology practices and elevating the costs on colonoscopies. One investor was calling it ‘The Golden Age of Older Rectums.”
Dan: I nonetheless love that you just discovered that quote. And Erin helped us along with your subsequent story about personal fairness. Where ER medical doctors in California had been suing to kick a private-equity backed firm out of emergency rooms there.
Emily: The large problem in that case: California’s company follow of medication regulation. Erin’s a lawyer by coaching. She was already chewing on this query
Erin Fuse Brown: We have all these legal guidelines within the books. Well, why doesn’t the company follow of medication stop this?
Emily: And what I like is: That case in California helped her begin to crack that query.
Because she knew that the solutions– what Erin calls the nitty gritty stuff — that’s all buried in contracts. Contracts she didn’t have entry to.
Erin Fuse Brown: They are typically confidential. Um, they’re personal contracts. It’s very troublesome to see them.
Emily: But now these California contracts had been proof in a lawsuit. So she might research them.
Erin Fuse Brown: That litigation allowed us to get a, a way of how these contracts are structured.
Emily: And right here’s the fundamental construction.
Erin Fuse Brown: An entity like a hospital or one Medical or Optum, stands up one thing referred to as a administration service group.
Emily: A administration service group — MSO for brief .
The MSO is ostensibly simply there to care for “back office” stuff — like billing or HR or compliance — to make the enterprise run higher. Here’s how they find yourself truly working the present.
Erin and others name this the “friendly physician model.”
The MSO brings in a figure-head physician — the pleasant doctor– who works for them as an govt.
Then the MSO fronts this pleasant doctor cash to purchase a majority stake within the follow, which places the pleasant doctor in command of the medical facet.
So on the one hand, they’re an OWNER. They personal the follow — due to cash from the company MSO.
And however, they’re an EMPLOYEE — working for a similar company MSO.
Which Erin says is a battle of curiosity.?
Erin Fuse Brown: The battle of curiosity is that they’re taking all of their marching orders from their final boss, who’s the MSO, proper? They hit their numbers, then their compensation goes up from the MSO. So they’re actually type of like a enterprise supervisor who occurs to have an MD behind title.
Emily: I consider it as kinda like… the CIA covertly putting in its favored chief in another country Except the chief overtly, publicly taking a wage from the CIA. Oh, and perhaps has perhaps by no means even been to the nation.
Erin Fuse Brown: Like the proprietor– who has an MD, who has a license and is subsequently eligible to personal the follow – they could reside in a special state. They could by no means have stepped foot within the follow
Emily: And they begin altering the way in which the follow is run in a approach that makes the company entity essentially the most cash. Even if it’s not nice for clinicians and sufferers.
Erin Fuse Brown: You’re gonna see sufferers not in, , 15 minute appointments. You’re gonna see them in 9 minute appointments.
Emily: And she says they ratchet up the strain to do issues like “upcode” — assign diagnoses with higher-priced billing codes.
Erin Fuse Brown: The MSO can ship type of notices to, it’s like excessive performing clinicians saying like, congrats, you get a bonus. Or reminders, like, you’re on the underside of the checklist, you’re not hitting your targets. We want you to upcode extra. Basically make us extra money. And for those who don’t, then we’re gonna punish you both by providing you with worse scheduling instances, we’re gonna dock your pay or, , or do different issues.
Emily: And then… perhaps there’s a non-compete, making it more durable to go away, like at Oregon Medical Group.
So Erin and a pair of different researchers printed that paper that stated — and I’m oversimplifying a bit — that if you need an actual ban on the company follow of medication — you want tackle these MSOs, and this pleasant doctor set-up.
After Ben Bowman learn that paper, he acquired in contact with Erin and her colleagues, and ultimately they sat right down to work collectively.
Going into the 2024 legislative session, Bowman had the blueprint. And he had allies — like former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber. Who was an ER doc himself.
He acquired co-sponsors from each events. And that they had a robust coalition of out of doors supporters.
Ben Bowman: We had affected person advocacy teams, we had labor unions. We had the Oregon Medical Association. We had the Oregon Nurses Association.
Emily: Of course there have been opponents.
Ben Bowman: You can think about the pursuits who didn’t wanna see this occur, like principally any giant company, which incorporates 4 of the six largest companies in America…
Emily: Like UnitedHealth Group. Obviously. But additionally CVS. Amazon. Not to say dozens of personal fairness corporations you’ve by no means heard of.
He says the invoice regarded like it might move — however Republicans blocked it with a last-second parliamentary trick. So it didn’t get a vote. That was March, 2024.
Then, a number of weeks later, Oregon Medical Group hit the headlines.
Ben Bowman: You can think about the sensation in Eugene. Ten thousand individuals who get this piece of mail saying you don’t have a physician anymore, together with aged individuals who had been counting on that major care physician to fill their prescriptions and to maintain them wholesome.
Emily: A couple of months later, a neighborhood group in Eugene hosted a city corridor.
Ben Bowman: It included legislators. It included management of the Oregon Medical Group. It included Optum Oregon management,
Emily: Yep, Optum Oregon confirmed up. And handed Ben Bowman and his allies a speaking level.
Ben Bowman: The head of Optum, Oregon stated in that, in that city corridor, this quote:
Dr. Phil Capp, Optum Oregon: …the experiment of getting doctor directed healthcare on this nation during the last 50 or 70 years didn’t work. It didn’t work. So now we have to attempt a brand new approach.
Emily: Bowman says that line helped make the stakes actually clear when he introduced his invoice again in 2025.
Ben Bowman: What is at stake within the company follow of medication debate is would you like your healthcare choices whenever you’re in an examination room being made by a physician? Or do you agree with what Optum’s acknowledged place was? Which is we expect someone else needs to be making that call. Not physicians.
Emily: And when the 2025 session began, he had one other new benefit: his occasion tapped him to be majority chief.
Ben Bowman: I believe that was actually useful, that this was not similar to a freshman legislator’s invoice. This was the home majority chief saying, that is actually essential to me and my constituents.
Emily: This time the invoice handed by greater than two-thirds. The ultimate language has limits. It doesn’t apply to hospitals – which additionally gobble up tons of medical practices. It doesn’t apply to telehealth suppliers. And doesn’t completely ban MSOs. But it makes actually clear what MSOs are allowed to do– what sort of choices they will make. For occasion, they will’t restrict how lengthy a physician spends with a affected person.
Ben Bowman: a company proprietor, a non-physician, can’t dictate to a physician “you can only see this patient for 15 minutes.”
Emily: And they will’t make clinicians signal non-compete clauses. Those medical doctors can fly free if they need.
And crucially — the brand new regulation addresses the battle of curiosity in that “friendly physician” figurehead setup. It limits how a lot management they will have within the medical follow in the event that they’re actually working for the MSO.
Erin Fuse Brown says this provision acquired essentially the most pushback from the trade–– and it’s the one lobbyists are working to stop in different states.
Erin Fuse Brown: And that’s telling, proper? If the trade is most involved in regards to the twin compensation, twin possession then that’s the place the rubber hits the street.
Emily: And based mostly on what she discovered from Oregon, she’s put collectively mannequin laws for different states.
Which, Ben Bowman says, is one thing his opponents had been afraid of all alongside. He says out of state corporations despatched lobbyists to Oregon to combat his invoice.
Dan: Whoa. Emily, thanks a lot for that story. I like the concept that corporations exterior of Oregon are already scared that different states will undertake a model of this regulation.
We’ll be watching each of those tales in 2026, and others — together with stuff we simply didn’t get to.
I discussed earlier that states moved to limit pharmacy b enefit managers, and to limit worth gouging by hospitals. But I don’t suppose I discussed that essentially the most aggressive legal guidelines on these subjects had been from two states that present up vivid crimson on political maps: Arkansas and Indiana.
We’ve gotta get round to that.
Meanwhile, it was SO heartening to report these tales. Because that meant assembly advocates and legislators from across the nation — people I’d by no means heard of earlier than, individuals I’m so glad to have met, as a result of they’re doing a lot sensible, devoted work to make issues suck much less.
Emily: 100% and I’ll add that I additionally acquired to speak with individuals in states like Colorado and California who’ve been doing unimaginable work to decrease drug costs on issues like insulin and the rheumatoid-arthritis drug Enbrel.
Following up on what they’ve completed and getting these tales on the present is among the issues I’m particularly wanting ahead to in 2026.
Dan: I’m so wanting ahead to having you try this — and talking of what you’ll be doing in 2026, Emily, I believe we’ve truly saved the most effective information for final.
Anybody who’s been listening to our present just lately is aware of: Like lots of people, we’ve been SWEATING medical insurance for 2026.
Emily: I imply, I’ve been sweating bullets. I moved to an Obamacare plan this 12 months, and with out the improved subsidies which can be set to run out, I didn’t understand how I used to be purported to afford these premiums.
Dan: I’ve been sweating too. Because if that occurred: Could you afford to truly maintain working right here part-time?
We’ve been exploring an alternate: Could you get insurance coverage by An Arm and a Leg? It could be cheaper, and higher insurance coverage.
But we’d want to extend your hours — from 20 hours every week to 30 or extra.
Could An Arm and a Leg afford to try this? I didn’t know.
But I ran some numbers final week — wanting particularly on the donations individuals have been making since our fundraising season began in November.
And the reply is: YES. People have been so beneficiant up to now, I’m able to make that dedication.
Emily: We have the all-time biggest neighborhood of listeners.
Dan: Seriously. Don’t get me fallacious: The numbers up to now don’t imply we’re ALL SET for 2026.
So, for those who’re listening to this, and also you’ve been contemplating making a present — PLEASE DO IT. We are relying on you.
Not solely so Emily will get higher, more-affordable medical insurance. But so WE GET FIFTY PERCENT MORE EMILY.
Now, you’ve simply heard Emily’s reporting proper right here. You’ve been listening to it. You understand how wonderful her work is.
But it’s possible you’ll not know: Emily’s additionally the explanation for lots of OTHER stuff you’ve observed.
Like, we introduced again our First Aid Kit publication this 12 months, and made it weekly?
You don’t see Emily’s byline on it– as a result of she’s the EDITOR. You don’t wanna hear all of the backstage work — on that challenge and others — nevertheless it’s been large.
Having fifty p.c extra of Emily’s time is gonna energy SO a lot new work in 2026. You’re going to utterly like it.
And we undoubtedly want your assist to make it occur.
To make that reward, simply go to arm and a leg present dot com, slash assist.
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And the reply is: Maybe, for those who act quick. You all gave much more in November than we anticipated — which was AMAZING… and it means now we have fewer matching {dollars} left at this level.There are nonetheless SOME — however they’re going quick. If you need your reward doubled, head NOW to arm and a leg present dot com, slash, assist.
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Thank you SO a lot to all people who’s already given, who’s allowed us to get right here, to make this dedication.
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Thank you SO a lot! We’ll be again with another episode earlier than the tip of the 12 months.
Till then, care for your self.
This episode of An Arm and a Leg was produced by me, Dan Weissmann together with Emily Pisacreta — and edited by Ellen Weiss.
Adam Raymonda is our audio wizard.
Our music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions.
Claire Davenport is our engagement producer.
Sarah Ballema is our Operations Manager. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations.
An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. That’s a nationwide newsroom producing in-depth journalism about well being points in America and a core program at KFF, an impartial supply of well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism.
Zach Dyer is senior audio producer at KFF Health News. He’s editorial liaison to this present.
An Arm and a Leg is distributed by KUOW, Seattle’s NPR information station.
And due to the Institute for Nonprofit News for serving as our fiscal sponsor.
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