A Few Extra Good Issues From 2025
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 reviews. Whereas a nationwide court docket ruling has solid doubt on the brand new legislation’s future, a shopper rights lawyer tells Weissmann why she stays optimistic.
And a legislation in Oregon goals to forestall firms and personal fairness corporations from gobbling up medical clinics, elevating costs, and, typically, delivering worse care.
Plus, the crew 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.” Beforehand, Dan was a workers reporter for Market and Chicago’s WBEZ. His work additionally seems on “All Issues Thought-about”; Market; the BBC; “99 P.c Invisible”; and “Reveal,” from the Middle for Investigative Reporting.
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Emily Pisacreta
Producer
Claire Davenport
Producer
Adam Raymonda
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Ellen Weiss
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Transcript: Some extra issues that didn’t suck in 2025
Be aware: “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 instrument however examine the corresponding audio earlier than quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there–
It has been a protracted yr, and sure, 2026 is shaping as much as be a doozy.
As I document this, it’s trying like every hope that Congress will prolong sure Obamacare subsidies for subsequent yr are trying like a protracted shot. Consultants say thousands and thousands of individuals may lose insurance coverage protection.
And– to not rub it in– however the federal authorities really backtracked this yr on one other problem we’ve talked about right here: Holding medical money owed off of individuals’s credit score reviews.
The Biden administration spent years crafting a rule to ascertain that safety.
The Trump administration has really mentioned lately: these protections are ILLEGAL.
However states have been enacting legal guidelines of their very own this yr … which suggests 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 .Different states have been staking out new floor.
For instance, a brand new legislation in Oregon goes onerous at a core motive why well being care retains costing extra on a regular basis:
Huge firms and traders hold gobbling up increasingly more medical practices— jacking up costs and (a minimum of typically) delivering considerably crummier care.
Oregon’s new legislation goals to slam the brakes on that.
In reality, a lot of states have performed a lot of issues that didn’t suck this yr.
A number of weeks in the past, we checked out state legal guidelines that push again towards some methods insurance coverage firms 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.
Legal guidelines like these handed in a lot of states — purple states, blue states, purple states. With bipartisan assist.
So did legal guidelines proscribing intermediary firms like pharmacy profit managers from jacking up what individuals pay for medicine. And legal guidelines proscribing 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 mix of political work and a few hard-core nerding out. And once they go, legal guidelines like Oregon’s turn out to be fashions different states can decide up on.
So, let’s go.
That is An Arm and a Leg– a present about why well being care prices so freaking a lot, and what we will possibly 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 vital enraging, terrifying, miserable, elements 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.
However Maine is a bit more purple. And Maine’s legislation handed unanimously.
Right here’s State senator Donna Bailey, who sponsored it.
Donna Bailey: I don’t bear in mind lots of heavy pushback, which was pleasantly shocking to me, fairly truthfully.
Dan: Stunning as a result of it’s not like simply saying “let’s assist individuals with medical money owed” 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. However due to unpaid medical payments, we have been unable to simply go purchase a brand new or used automobile when the engine blew in our solely working car…
Andrea Steward: I started accumulating my very own medical debt at 17 after I found, which I solely found on my credit score report, after I was making an attempt to buy my first dwelling in 2022…
Dan: However legislators additionally heard onerous numbers. Contemporary numbers, launched that very day
From a survey displaying that nearly half of Mainers have been carrying medical debt.
Loads of them wound up with dings on their credit score due to it. Which meant — as they mentioned within the survey — medical debt on credit score reviews was inflicting them actual issues.
Ann Woloson: It’s affecting their means to get jobs. It’s affecting their means to purchase a automobile. It’s affecting their means to hire an residence. One thing must be performed about it.
Dan: That’s the one that commissioned the survey.
Ann Woloson: I’m Anne Woloson and I’m govt director for Customers for Reasonably priced 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 yr.
Dan: Wow. And also you haven’t solved the issue of inexpensive healthcare in 40 years.
Ann Woloson: Nope. Sadly. I suppose I’m not doing an excellent job. Proper.
Dan: Nicely, there could be some countervailing forces.
Dan: Listening to the story behind this invoice, I don’t assume Ann Woloson is unhealthy at her job.
For years, she’s convened a technique assembly on Thursday mornings at 9am. Shopper advocates, well being care advocates.
Ann Woloson: We used to fulfill on the State Home pre pandemic, however now we meet over, we meet over Zoom slash phone. Nevertheless. No matter’s straightforward. Typically individuals are of their automobile.
Dan: She says in fall 2024, the group began looking forward to the following legislative session.
Ann Woloson: We have been beginning to discuss like what extra can we do with medical debt? And any person most likely mentioned, properly, I’ve been speaking to Senator Bailey and she or he’s excited about submitting a invoice to handle the reporting of medical debt to collectors. And we’re all like, oh, that seems like an important concept. That’s one thing we will get behind.
Dan: Ann Woloson discovered some cash in her price range to run a survey — like twelve thousand {dollars}.
Ann Woloson: Which possibly doesn’t sound like so much, however for a small nonprofit, that’s a, that’s some huge cash.
Dan: I don’t have it in my pocket. Proper? It’s cash.
Dan: Ann Woloson says: this was a strategic funding.
Ann Woloson: We’ll steadily hear from trade representatives that such and such. This isn’t actually an issue. I don’t know the place that is coming from.
Dan: And so they dismiss particular person testimony as a number of remoted hard-luck tales.
Ann Woloson: Nicely, right here we’ve 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: No one voted towards the invoice. Not in committee. Not on the Senate ground, not within the Home. It was a greater return on funding than Ann Woloson had hoped for.
Ann Woloson: So there was, I might say, nearly a unanimous feeling on the market that one thing wanted to be performed 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 difficulty helped. Partly as a result of it raised the difficulty’s profile.
And partly as a result of the precise rule– finalized simply earlier than Biden left workplace — might have left opponents pondering the stakes have been decrease.
Donna Bailey: Some politicians who might have been opposed, have been similar to, properly, it doesn’t matter if we go one thing on the state degree. It’s already, you already know, forbidden on the federal degree, so going to place their energies elsewhere.
Dan: Then again, advocates like Ann Woloson have been taking a look at one thing else: The 2024 election outcomes. Joe Biden might have pushed via 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 have been engaged on this um, that we wanted to codify one thing in Maine in case one thing modified on the, on the federal degree.
Dan: Which after all, one thing did. Inside weeks of taking workplace, the Trump administration successfully shuttered the company behind the rule: the Shopper Monetary Safety 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 battle that lawsuit, and over the summer season a federal decide discovered the rule unlawful. Donna Bailey and her allies have been undoubtedly watching.
Donna Bailey: We’re like, wow. You understand, thank goodness we put one thing in legislation on the state degree.
Dan: However there was a brand new potential risk. The decide who zapped the federal rule went farther.
In his ruling, he wrote that not solely did the Biden rule violate a legislation known as the Truthful Credit score Reporting Act– however that very same federal legislation 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 ought to be tossed.
Which undoubtedly sounds prefer it sucks.
However right here’s the place issues get good and nerdy.
I don’t assume anyone’s been pushing on this problem of medical money owed and credit score reviews longer — or nerding out more durable — than Chi Chi Wu. She’s an lawyer with the Nationwide Shopper Regulation Middle. 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 reviews on the time instructed.
Chi Chi Wu: The decide didn’t quote, unquote, rule that state legal guidelines have been preempted.
Dan: She makes use of a nerdy authorized phrase to explain the decide’s assertion about pre-emption: Dicta. Which means, if I’ve acquired this proper, simply speaking. Not really making legislation 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 beneath the Truthful Credit score Reporting Act is absolutely sophisticated. Slightly bit head spinning. There’s some case legislation on the market and he didn’t take into account any of it as a result of frankly the difficulty wasn’t actually earlier than him. So, that’s the half that didn’t suck as unhealthy as you may assume.
Dan: Mainly, Chi Chi Wu says, to do away with these state legal guidelines, plaintiffs must problem them in court docket, one after the other. For the document, she thinks the arguments towards these legal guidelines are weak.
Chi Chi Wu: However they push it. I imply, they push it and so they see if a court docket will purchase their arguments. They typically push theories that aren’t supported even by the textual content of the statute. And typically they get away with it, sadly. I imply, they’ve very costly legal professionals that, you already know, that is how they earn their huge bucks by pushing the legislation as a lot as they’ll in favor of their purchasers.
Dan: I really talked with a kind of high-priced legal professionals lately. Who was not prepared to say victory– or settle for defeat prematurely. She was like, “This stuff must be litigated.”
Which after all has began. Really, in Maine.
However 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’s, the court docket hasn’t granted a preliminary injunction, which might have prevented Maine from implementing the legislation whereas the case performs out. Which is able to take … some time.
And if courts do finally rule towards states like Maine, Chi Chi Wu has legislative tweaks to recommend that would make state legal guidelines extra lawsuit-proof.
If you wish to nerd out, we’ll have hyperlinks in our First Support Package publication.
However now, we’ll take a look at a state that got here out swinging this yr in an enormous new battle:
Oregon handed a legislation to forestall huge firms and traders from taking on 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 Well being Information. That’s a nonprofit newsroom protecting well being points in America. These of us are wonderful journalists. Their reporting wins every kind of awards yearly. We’re honored to work with them.
Dan: Within the spring of 2024, a information story broke in Oregon that finally drew nationwide consideration.
Information anchor: You known as and we listened. We’ve been getting every kind of calls and emails from sufferers who have been dropped with none warning. It’s our prime story tonight. KEZI 9…
Dan: These have been sufferers at Oregon Medical Group, a sequence of clinics within the Eugene space. And these sufferers had simply gotten letters within the mail
Information reporter: telling them their main care supplier is leaving the medical group and the necessity to discover care some place else.
Dan: Different sufferers solely acquired the information once they known 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 1000’s of sufferers stranded.
A physician at one space hospital instructed a neighborhood information outlet increasingly more Oregon Medical Group sufferers have been beginning to present up on the ER.
A few of them simply wanted refills on prescriptions, since that their common medical doctors have been gone. Not fired, it turned out. Give up.
Ben Bowman: These medical doctors left as a result of they didn’t agree with the best way the follow was being run. This wasn’t what they signed up for once they went into medication.
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 mentioned they’d give up as a result of the follow modified after a takeover by Optum. That’s a reputation that 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.
Together with working medical practices. Nowadays greater than 10 % of ALL medical doctors within the US work for Optum. Greater 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 huge modifications. Medical doctors mentioned dictates from Optum had them spending much less time with every affected person, with extra sufferers to see, and, after Optum lower workers, with a ton extra paperwork to grind via themselves.
To prime it off, a minimum of a few of them mentioned they acquired socked with pay cuts.
However quitting their jobs meant really leaving their sufferers behind. Their contracts had non-compete clauses, in order that they couldn’t simply see their sufferers some place else close by.
Ben Bowman: A few of them went to work in different areas. A few of them left the state of Oregon. A few of them have been so burned out. They mentioned they’re performed with medication.
Dan: Information reviews 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 point these tales hit the information, Ben Bowman and a few allies had already been combating for greater than a yr to repair what he and others say is the foundation reason behind what occurred in Eugene.
Which might be going to sound acquainted.
Ben Bowman: Over the past 10 to fifteen years, there’s been a fast acceleration of company and personal fairness possession over medical clinics.
Dan: These are companies that owe it to their traders to place income first. However well being care suppliers are supposed to place sufferers first.
Ben Bowman: These two issues are inherently in battle typically 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 perfect curiosity of their affected person.
Dan: Ben Bowman’s saying “we get to resolve as a state” and right here’s what “we in Oregon need the reply to be” as a result of this yr he and his allies gained an enormous legislative battle.
He talked about how they did it with this present’s senior producer, Emily Pisacreta.
Ben Bowman: That is most likely a for much longer story than you’re asking for, however,
Emily: No, I find it irresistible. I find it irresistible. It’s nice.
Dan: Emily? Actually lengthy?
Emily: I promise not too lengthy. It begins with an mental puzzle.
Bowman may see that huge firms and private-equity — PE for brief — have been taking on increasingly more medical practices. Throughout, 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 drugs legislation on the books.
Emily: …that principally says, to personal a medical follow, it’s a must to have a medical license. A company or group of traders can’t get a kind of.
Ben Bowman: However on the similar time, we’re seeing this fast improve in firms and PE corporations shopping for clinics. How is that doable if we’ve a legislation that claims you may’t try this?
Emily: In 2023, Bowman learn an article within the New England Journal of Medication that appeared to supply some solutions — and possibly a blueprint for constructing stronger guardrails.
Certainly one of its authors is Erin Fuse Brown.
Erin Fuse Brown: …and I’m a Professor of Well being Providers, Coverage, and Apply on the Brown College College of Public Well being.
Emily: I met Erin again in 2022, after we checked out how non-public fairness corporations have 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 simply discovered that quote. And Erin helped us along with your subsequent story about non-public fairness. The place ER medical doctors in California have 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 drugs legislation. Erin’s a lawyer by coaching. She was already chewing on this query
Erin Fuse Brown: We’ve all these legal guidelines within the books. Nicely, why doesn’t the company follow of drugs stop this?
Emily: And what I like is: That case in California helped her begin to crack that query.
As a result of 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 usually confidential. Um, they’re non-public contracts. It’s very troublesome to see them.
Emily: However now these California contracts have been proof in a lawsuit. So she may 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 essential construction.
Erin Fuse Brown: An entity like a hospital or one Medical or Optum, stands up one thing known as a administration service group.
Emily: A administration service group — MSO for brief .
The MSO is ostensibly simply there to care for “again workplace” stuff — like billing or HR or compliance — to make the enterprise run higher. Right here’s how they find yourself really working the present.
Erin and others name this the “pleasant doctor mannequin.”
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 control of the medical facet.
So on the one hand, they’re an OWNER. They personal the follow — because of 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 that they’re actually type of like a enterprise supervisor who occurs to have an MD behind identify.
Emily: I consider it as kinda like… the CIA covertly putting in its favored chief out of the country Besides the chief overtly, publicly taking a wage from the CIA. Oh, and possibly has possibly by no means even been to the nation.
Erin Fuse Brown: Just like the proprietor– who has an MD, who has a license and is due to this fact eligible to personal the follow – they could reside in a special state. They might by no means have stepped foot within the follow
Emily: And so they begin altering the best way the follow is run in a approach that makes the company entity probably the most cash. Even when it’s not nice for clinicians and sufferers.
Erin Fuse Brown: You’re gonna see sufferers not in, you already know, 15 minute appointments. You’re gonna see them in 9 minute appointments.
Emily: And he or she says they ratchet up the stress 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 listing, you’re not hitting your targets. We want you to upcode extra. Mainly make us extra money. And when you don’t, then we’re gonna punish you both by providing you with worse scheduling occasions, we’re gonna dock your pay or, you already know, or do different issues.
Emily: After which… possibly there’s a non-compete, making it more durable to depart, like at Oregon Medical Group.
So Erin and a pair of different researchers printed that paper that mentioned — and I’m oversimplifying a bit — that if you need an actual ban on the company follow of drugs — 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 finally 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 so they had a strong coalition of out of doors supporters.
Ben Bowman: We had affected person advocacy teams, we had labor unions. We had the Oregon Medical Affiliation. We had the Oregon Nurses Affiliation.
Emily: In fact there have been opponents.
Ben Bowman: You may think about the pursuits who didn’t wanna see this occur, like principally any massive company, which incorporates 4 of the six largest firms in America…
Emily: Like UnitedHealth Group. Clearly. But in addition CVS. Amazon. To not point out dozens of personal fairness corporations you’ve by no means heard of.
He says the invoice appeared like it might go — 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 may 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 have been counting on that main care physician to fill their prescriptions and to maintain them wholesome.
Emily: A number 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 top of Optum, Oregon mentioned 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 we’ve 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’s at stake within the company follow of drugs debate is would you like your healthcare choices if you’re in an examination room being made by a physician? Or do you agree with what Optum’s said place was? Which is we expect any person else ought to be making that call. Not physicians.
Emily: And when the 2025 session began, he had one other new benefit: his get together 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 vital 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. However it makes actually clear what MSOs are allowed to do– what sort of choices they’ll make. As an illustration, they’ll’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 may solely see this affected person for quarter-hour.”
Emily: And so they can’t make clinicians signal non-compete clauses. These medical doctors can fly free if they need.
And crucially — the brand new legislation addresses the battle of curiosity in that “pleasant doctor” figurehead setup. It limits how a lot management they’ll have within the medical follow in the event that they’re actually working for the MSO.
Erin Fuse Brown says this provision acquired probably the most pushback from the trade–– and it’s the one lobbyists are working to forestall 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 highway.
Emily: And based mostly on what she realized from Oregon, she’s put collectively mannequin laws for different states.
Which, Ben Bowman says, is one thing his opponents have been afraid of all alongside. He says out of state firms despatched lobbyists to Oregon to battle his invoice.
Dan: Whoa. Emily, thanks a lot for that story. I like the concept firms outdoors of Oregon are already scared that different states will undertake a model of this legislation.
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. However I don’t assume I discussed that probably the most aggressive legal guidelines on these subjects have been from two states that present up vivid purple on political maps: Arkansas and Indiana.
We’ve gotta get round to that.
In the meantime, it was SO heartening to report these tales. As a result of that meant assembly advocates and legislators from across the nation — of us 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 unbelievable 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 without doubt one of the issues I’m particularly trying ahead to in 2026.
Dan: I’m so trying ahead to having you try this — and talking of what you’ll be doing in 2026, Emily, I believe we’ve really saved the perfect information for final.
Anyone who’s been listening to our present 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 yr, and with out the improved subsidies which can be set to run out, I didn’t know the way I used to be imagined to afford these premiums.
Dan: I’ve been sweating too. As a result of if that occurred: May you afford to truly hold working right here part-time?
We’ve been exploring an alternate: May you get insurance coverage via An Arm and a Leg? It could be cheaper, and higher insurance coverage.
However we’d want to extend your hours — from 20 hours per week to 30 or extra.
May An Arm and a Leg afford to try this? I didn’t know.
However I ran some numbers final week — trying particularly on the donations individuals have been making since our fundraising season began in November.
And the reply is: YES. Individuals have been so beneficiant up to now, I’m able to make that dedication.
Emily: We’ve the all-time biggest group of listeners.
Dan: Critically. Don’t get me improper: The numbers up to now don’t imply we’re ALL SET for 2026.
So, when you’re listening to this, and also you’ve been contemplating making a present — PLEASE DO IT. We’re relying on you.
Not solely so Emily will get higher, more-affordable medical insurance. However 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.
However you might not know: Emily’s additionally the rationale for lots of OTHER stuff you’ve seen.
Like, we introduced again our First Support Package publication this yr, 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 mission and others — however it’s been large.
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Thanks SO a lot! We’ll be again with another episode earlier than the top of the yr.
Until 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 Periods.
Claire Davenport is our engagement producer.
Sarah Ballema is our Operations Supervisor. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations.
An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Well being Information. 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 Well being Information. He’s editorial liaison to this present.
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