People who work in real-life emergency rooms have raved about how the new TV drama \u201cThe Pitt\u201d accurately captures the complex dynamics of their workplaces and the medical details of their cases.<\/p>\n
Host Dan Weissmann talks with Alex Janke, an emergency medicine doctor and health policy researcher, about how the show stacks up against his experiences in the ER. They also discuss its depictions of the financial forces that shape day-to-day problems inside ERs.<\/p>\n
\tDan Weissmann<\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tHost and producer of “An Arm and a Leg.” Previously, Dan was a staff reporter for Marketplace and Chicago’s WBEZ. His work also appears on All Things Considered, Marketplace, the BBC, 99 Percent Invisible, and Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting.\t\t<\/p>\n \tEmily Pisacreta, Claire Davenport \tAdam Raymonda \tEllen Weiss \t\t\t\t\tClick to open the Transcript\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tTranscript<\/strong>: Why \u2018The Pitt\u2019 Is Our Fave New Drama<\/strong>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Note: \u201cAn Arm and a Leg\u201d uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.<\/em><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Hey there. I\u2019ve got a new favorite TV show: \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d I signed up for HBO \u2014 Max, whatever \u2013thats what my editor says I\u2019m supposed to call it. The show takes place in a Pittsburgh emergency room, and the first season follows the staff through a single, jam-packed day, hour by hour. It\u2019s riveting. Noah Wyle, who got famous playing a young doctor on the show ER in the 1990s, stars here as the senior doc on duty. And people who work in emergency rooms say it gets a lot of things right, including medical details that fly past most of us in scenes like this\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor 1: <\/strong>Bring me up to speed?\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor 2: <\/strong>Intubated for agonal respirations. GCS five, probably anticoagulated. Doctor 1: <\/strong>With what?\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor 3: <\/strong>First time here. There\u2019s no medical records.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor 1: <\/strong>Call for FFP.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor 2: <\/strong>No, we got four factors\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>And yeah, I basically did not catch any of that. But when I played it for an actual ER doctor, Alex Janke, he kept smiling and nodding along. In any case, those were not the kinds of scenes I called Alex Janke to talk about. Because what drew me to the Pitt \u2014 for professional purposes at least \u2014 are scenes that show the bigger-picture forces \u2014 the financial forces \u2014 that MAKE this day, and every day, so difficult for the people who work in big-city ERs, and for the people who show up needing care. Forces that make ERs more crowded, and more chaotic. Less safe, and more expensive. I called Alex Janke because on top of working shifts at ERs, he does research on those forces as a professor at the University of Michigan.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I care a lot about. Emergency medicine. Like I think that what we do is really, really special. And I also think that if you want to understand the problems in the world, you should come to the emergency department,\u2019cause that\u2019s where people go when they have problems.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Problems like gun violence, homelessness, sex trafficking,drug addiction, and a likely hate crime bring patients to The Pitt throughout the season. The Pitt also looks at questions that Alex studies: Why do people have to wait so long to get seen at ERs? How badly can those long wait-times affect our health? So, we watched some scenes that address those questions together and Alex was like\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I\u2019ve gotta find the people that made this show. This is so crazy. They, they\u2019ve gotta have some docs working for them.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: There\u2019s a whole team. There\u2019s a whole team.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Alex Janke thinks the producers picked the right team\u2026 because, he says: This is too real. So here comes a debrief. Basically free of spoilers \u2014 in terms of the MEDICAL drama. And I\u2019ll tell you right now: The financial problems? Those storylines do not get wrapped up on The Pitt, or in real life. But the show does help us understand them, and what they cost all of us\u2013 doctors, patients, everybody\u2013 in money, in our health, and in our emotional well-being.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is An Arm and a Leg, a show about why health care costs so freaking much, and what we can maybe do about it. I\u2019m Dan Weissmann. I\u2019m a reporter, and I like a challenge. So the job we\u2019ve chosen on this show is to take one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing parts of American life, and bring you something entertaining, empowering, and useful.\u00a0<\/p>\n The folks who made \u201cThe Pitt\u201d made a super-canny choice: The show follows a single day in this ER \u2014 and it happens to be the first day for a crew of new residents and interns. So while we watch them get shown around, we get a tour. First stop, the waiting room. It\u2019s PACKED. A second-year resident explains how patients register, get a quick assessment\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor: <\/strong>And then they come back to waiting room till bed opens up Doctor 2: <\/strong>For how long?\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor: <\/strong>Eight hours if they\u2019re lucky. A lot of times 12.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor 3: <\/strong>Ah, is it always this busy?\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctor: <\/strong>Uh, no. It gets a lot busier.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Here\u2019s Alex\u2019s take on that snapshot.<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I think this is entirely real. And we can really expect this to be true going into the future that, uh, you know, eight hour waits, 12 hour waits, very high rates of left without being seen are just gonna keep happening all over the country. And it\u2019s not gonna be every day that you walk in the door. but it\u2019s gonna keep happening.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: Why?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: That\u2019s a great question.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Alex has a couple of answers. One is about demographics: We\u2019ve got more folks now who are old, with complex medical issues than ever before, and that\u2019s only gonna get more true for a long time to come. The other basically gets dramatized in the next couple scenes we watch. First, Noah Wyle\u2019s character, the senior MD on this shift, Dr. Michael Rabinovich \u2014 everybody calls him Doctor Robby \u2013 gives the newbies his briefing. Here\u2019s the first thing he tells them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Robby: As you can see, our house is always packed and our department is mostly clogged up with borders. Those are admitted patients waiting for a room upstairs sometimes for days.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>OK, that went by quick, but Dr Robby basically just described WHY people wait eight hours, twelve hours, why this ER and its waiting room is so full. I\u2019ll let Alex explain.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: The emergency department is not full because folks with the sniffles came in when they could have gone to an urgent care. That is not the reason that the ER is crowded. Those patients are so easy, we see \u2019em out in triage. I love seeing those patients \u2019cause that\u2019s somebody that I can\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n get in and out. I can take really good care of that patient sometimes just from the waiting room. The ER is full because there are folks that need to be in the hospital or folks that need to be in skilled nursing facilities or in rehab and we can\u2019t get them to that next step.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>So those patients become \u201cboarders\u201d \u2014 get stuck: they can\u2019t get moved to the next step, but of course they can\u2019t go home either.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: And so they wait in the ER and that creates crowding all around all the other patients.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>The \u201cboarders\u201d fill up the ER beds. So everybody else piles up in the waiting room. Things get super-crowded. That sucks for those of us who show up as patients \u2014 a lot of us wait a super-long time. And that crowding \u2014 and the chaos that comes with it \u2014 creates burnout for people who work in ERs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: The thing that burns you out is feeling like you\u2019re not able to do a good job or you\u2019re not in control of your working environment. And this is the reason. It is because it is crowded. Like an old lady comes in with belly pain. I can\u2019t take care of that patient in the waiting room that I need that lady back in the department. I wanna get a CAT scan on that lady. I need some time with her. And it\u2019s just, it\u2019s, it\u2019s dangerous and unpleasant all around.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: Because you, because you don\u2019t have space to see her. You don\u2019t have a bed, you don\u2019t have capacity to see her. And so she\u2019s in danger.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: Absolutely. Without a doubt. And, you know, there\u2019s a deep, there\u2019s a deep literature on this, crowding impacts the quality of care along every possible dimension. It makes you more likely to screw up. I\u2019m an ER doctor. My whole job is to not screw up. I\u2019m like playing this game and the game is to not miss something really bad. And the faster you make me go with fewer resources, your ER doctor\u2019s just a little more likely to screw up and not handle that correctly. I have gray hairs from a couple of cases.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>He tells me about one of them. A woman who came in with a rash. When he finally examined her, twelve hours later, it turned out that rash was from flesh-eating bacteria. Those twelve hours meant that bacteria did a lot of damage. Alex says that woman spent a long time in the ICU, and took months to fully recover.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I mean, those are the, you know, that\u2019s one of the cases I know about, like how many patients have I been on shift and I don\u2019t even know what happened,\u2019cause there\u2019s so much chaos going on that I don\u2019t have insight into what might have missed or what we might not have done very well?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>So the ER doesn\u2019t work because it\u2019s too crowded. And it\u2019s crowded because of \u201cboarders\u201d \u2014 patients waiting for beds elsewhere. And in the next scene, we get Dr. Robbie\u2019s perspective on WHY that\u2019s happening. That\u2019s when a hospital administrator, Gloria, shows up to give him a hard time. She says, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT YOUR NUMBERS. Meaning, patient satisfaction numbers.<\/p>\n Gloria: Do you know how likely patients are to recommend this hospital? Robby: Um, this is an emergency department, not a Taco Bell. Gloria: 11%.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Robby: Well, if you want people to be happier, don\u2019t make \u2019em wait for 12 hours.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Gloria: There\u2019s a nursing shortage across the country.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Robby: Most of our patients are boarders who are waiting for a bed upstairs.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Gloria: We don\u2019t have the beds.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Robby: That\u2019s bullshit. The beds are up there. You just don\u2019t want to hire the staff. You need to care for \u2018em.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Alex has one little problem with this scene. He\u2019s like, these conversations definitely happen, but not on shift, on the ER floor. But you know, OK it\u2019s a TV show, and the whole premise is that we\u2019re on the floor the whole time. And Alex has a second problem. Dr. Robby maybe does too good a job keeping his cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: You know, Dr. Robby is rushing from one dying patient to another, and someone shows up in a suit and says, you know, your patients aren\u2019t very satisfied with your care. I think he handles it like an angel. If it were me, I think I would lose my job that day.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Otherwise, Alex is like: This is dead on.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: There\u2019s so much going on here. This is wild. It\u2019s so wild.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>And he unpacks it. Yes, there\u2019s a nursing shortage. Yes, there\u2019s an actual shortage of hospital beds. And to a degree, these shortages are \u2026 business decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: There\u2019s some real truth, there\u2019s a real hook to the idea that the emergency department waiting room and the emergency department beds as a place to keep folks waiting for a bed upstairs in the hospital \u2014 it is an optimization problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>An optimization problem. That\u2019s what Alex says people who study hospital administration have called this situation. The question is, what are you optimizing for? If you\u2019re a hospital administrator, Alex says, you\u2019re trying to optimize \u2026 your budget. You\u2019re asking yourself: How do you get the most return for what you spend? You don\u2019t do it by paying nurses to staff beds with no patients in them. Nobody\u2019s paying you for empty beds.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I mean, we want our hospital beds full. we\u2019ve gotta pay these enormous costs for inputs, like, uh, nurses and, every single hour of nursing care that you pay for, you wanna make sure that, uh, it\u2019s getting used. Every hospital bed day that you have staffed, you better fill up that bed.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>So, now you\u2019ve got a new equation to balance. Here\u2019s how Alex describes the question:\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: How do you maximize your patient bed days \u2014that\u2019s how you get paid \u2014 without ever having to turn away business?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>OK, let\u2019s unpack that: You want to maximize patient bed days. The number of beds that actually have patients in them, beds you\u2019re getting paid for, on any given day. But you\u2019ve limited the supply of beds upstairs. You don\u2019t want to pay for something you might not be able to sell. And yet: You don\u2019t want to turn away business.You\u2019ve got a patient who needs a hospital room \u2014 a potential paying customer \u2013you don\u2019t wanna tell \u2018em, hey we don\u2019t have room for you on our cardiac ward. You gotta go somewhere else. So, how do you make room for patients \u2014 for customers \u2014 when there\u2019s more demand?\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: Well, one way to do that is to queue those patients, put them in a in a slot so that they\u2019re ready to fill up that bed as soon as that bed becomes available. Where does that happen? The emergency department.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>So this is why Alex is so enthusiastic about this scene: It dramatizes this whole analysis \u2014 and Dr. Robby\u2019s perspective\u2013 the boarders who crowd up the ER and the waiting room: They\u2019re the results of the hospital\u2019s financial strategy. No wonder Dr. Robby\u2019s mad.\u00a0<\/p>\n Coming up: How doctors get caught in the processes that end up with awful bills for patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n This episode of An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. That\u2019s a nonprofit newsroom covering health issues in America. Their reporters win all kinds of awards every year. We are honored to work with them.<\/p>\n We\u2019re gonna skip ahead to episode six of The Pitt. No spoilers here. This scene stands alone, and it\u2019s all business. Robby stops by a computer terminal where one of the newbies is charting\u2013 writing up her notes after seeing a patient. Listen for a key term right up top: Medical Decision Making. A little later we\u2019ll hear Robby use its initials: MDM.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dr. Robby: Four-year-old with a fever. Your medical decision making says otitis media.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Javadi: Yeah, she had an ear infection.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Robby: Did you also consider and rule out meningitis, mastoiditis, malignant otitis external?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Javadi: I did.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Robby: Then you should document your cognitive work in the MDM. Dr. Javadi: You want me to pad my chart?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Robby: No. I want you to show your work. Billing is the side effect of that.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>\u201cBilling is a \u2018side effect\u2019 of adding details\u201d to the chart. When I watched that scene with Alex, he was like, Yup: charting is where our work turns into medical bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: So when we bill for care, we bill an insurer for care, we bill the chart, right?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>The billing department translates the work described in the chart into 5-digit codes, and each one has a price tag. MDM, medical decision-making, contributes to codes for \u201cevaluation and management\u201d like 99281 or 99285.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: And if you bill for 99285, you get a whole bunch of money. And if you bill for, uh, 99281, then you get a little bit of money.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>The only difference is that last number. It reflects a scale \u2014 1 to 5 \u2014 how much work went into this visit. Was this straightforward? That\u2019s a one. Was it high-level? Really complex? That could be a five. Researchers have found that \u201cupcoding\u201d \u2014 like billing a level four for something that\u2019s really probably a two \u2014 is one reason why, as a country, we spend more on ER bills every year. I tell Alex: In one of the very first episodes of this podcast, we heard from a listener who had brought his son to the local ER \u2014 only place open at night \u2014 for what turned out to be \u2026and ear infection. The hospital coded the visit a \u201c4\u201d out of\u00a0<\/p>\n five. Pretty expensive. Our listener said, if that\u2019s a four, what is it when you bring your leg in a bag? <\/em>Alex was like, Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: There\u2019s this fight between like physician groups on the one hand, and insurers on the other hand about like how hard our job is and how much they should pay us, and the only one who consistently loses in that fight is the patient.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: Yeah. Well said. Well said.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: You\u2019re absolutely right. It\u2019s definitely true in emergency medicine. And you know, like I, I\u2019ve written on this topic our patients are more medically complex than they have ever been. The complexity of the evaluation management that happens in the emergency department is higher than it has ever been. But that\u2019s no excuse for, you know, leaving the patient with an absurd bill that\u2019s out of proportion to what she did for them. This is one of the ways in which you\u2019re like, put in all of these like little situations where like you\u2019re in a lose-lose situation.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Lose-lose situation. Alex tells me a story. He was working in triage one day, and a guy came in with a bug bite.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: \u2026and his buddy had convinced him that he might have like a really bad problem. He was like, this is a black widow spider bite. And it was a crazy day and I\u2019m just like floating around at triage, slinging orders. And, he like stopped me in the hallway as he was like thinking about leaving. And he was like, do I really need to be seen for this? Do I really need to be seen for this? And I\u2019m like, well, you have been seen. I am a doctor. And, and he walked out the door and I had this moment where I was like, do I go write a note on this guy? If I write a note, then we\u2019ll bill him.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>And Alex says he knew: That guy didn\u2019t have insurance. Whatever that bill was, he could get stuck paying for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I don\u2019t know what that bill looks like. I don\u2019t have insight into that. I don\u2019t know how the place that I work at operates on that end. I\u2019m almost never involved in it at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: What\u2019d you do?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: Nah, I didn\u2019t write a note.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>I said to Alex: Geez, some hospitals have folks who help people in these situations, who go: \u201cHey, let\u2019s see if we can sign you up for Medicaid. Or a super-subsidized Obamacare plan. Or maybe you qualify for charity care here.\u201d But of course not every hospital has those folks. Alex was like, oh yeah, for sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: One of the places where I currently work, our registration staff know like a ton of stuff about insurance and patients will like ask me, and I\u2019m like, oh, no, no, no. This is the person you gotta talk to. They actually know how to enroll whether it\u2019s Medicaid or something else. Yeah.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: It\u2019s great that there\u2019s somebody , and you know, who the somebody is, for them to talk to,\u2019cause that is not everybody\u2019s experience.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: Yeah. And also, I\u2019ve worked at other places where you look around in the department and no one knows. And like, that\u2019s always a bummer. Like there was a little while where I was handing out a phone number \u2019cause I didn\u2019t like really know what I was supposed to be doing. And so I would, I would give people this phone number. I\u2019d be like, what you\u2019re telling me makes it sound like you qualify for Medicaid. But like, I don\u2019t really know anything about Medicaid. This is the website, this is the phone number. It\u2019s so bad.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>Alex says he hopes people who don\u2019t work in ER\u2019s watch The Pitt.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: This show is good for people like me because it like humanizes us in a lot of ways and the show definitely makes us out \u2014at least the first two episodes \u2014 they make us out in lots of heroic ways, and I think that\u2019s great. And I think lots of emergency physicians are heroes. Lots of us are not heroes. You know, we\u2019re just people.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>He thinks it\u2019ll help people like him \u2014 in his role as a researcher and advocates \u2014 make a case for policies that\u2019ll help ERs. And he\u2019s not mad about seeing the business questions get dramatized.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: We need to have those conversations way out in the open with bright lights and that\u2019s the only way that they won\u2019t ultimately have the patient be the only one who loses in the exchange. So, yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: As if we know a little bit more about the whole, about the game that we\u2019re in the middle of. Yeah.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: Exactly. Yeah.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>But as happy as he is that The Pitt is out there \u2014 having watched the first two episodes so we could have this conversation\u2013 he\u2019s not inclined to watch more of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: I think a lot of people, a lot of, like my friends, we don\u2019t, we don\u2019t have to watch it. I just go to work. It\u2019s so spot on, so often, it feels like you\u2019re at work. I\u2019m like, well, I do this. I\u2019ll tell you, I\u2019m watching Abbott Elementary.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>The network sitcom about a Philadelphia grade school.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alex Janke: It\u2019s pretty good. It\u2019s pretty good. There\u2019s some strong dialogue, there\u2019s some really strong characters.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: Teacher friends of mine love that show. And it\u2019s another, I mean, it\u2019s interesting \u2019cause that\u2019s another show about people who, part of their job is it like they\u2019re in the path of suffering that other people are headed for and doing their best.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex Janke: I sometimes say this to residents, but like you can go give as much as you want in the job of emergency medicine. You can give everything to the people who come in the door. It\u2019s the same thing with teachers, right? If you\u2019re a teacher, you can just keep giving. They\u2019ll never stop asking for more, and a lot of \u2019em do. It seems like a hard gig to me and considerably less remunerative than my job, so\u2026\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan: <\/strong>I will let my teacher friends know Alex said that. Meanwhile, about fifteen hours after we release this episode, HBO \u2014 I mean, Max \u2014 will release the last episode of The Pitt. For now. The show has been renewed for a second season, starting January 2026. Producers said recently that season two is gonna take place over a Fourth of July weekend\u2026 which, a study from Pew Research shows, means the busiest days of the year, by far, for emergency rooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019ll be back with a new episode in a few weeks. Till then, take care of yourself.<\/p>\n This episode of An Arm and a Leg was produced by me, Dan Weissmann, with help from Emily Pisacreta and Claire Davenport, edited by Ellen Weiss. Adam Raymonda is our audio wizard. Our music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations. Lynne Johnson is our operations manager. An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. That\u2019s a national newsroom producing in-depth journalism about health issues in America \u2013 and a core program at KFF: an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Zach Dyer is senior audio producer at KFF Health News. He\u2019s editorial liaison to this show. An Arm and a Leg is Distributed by KUOW\u2013 Seattle\u2019s NPR station. And thanks to the Institute for Nonprofit News for serving as our fiscal sponsor. They allow us to accept tax-exempt donations. You can learn more about INN at INN.org. Finally, thank you to everybody who supports this show financially. You can join in any time at arm and a leg show, dot com, slash: support. Thanks! And thanks for listening.<\/p>\n \u201cAn Arm and a Leg\u201d is a co-production of KFF Health News and Public Road Productions.<\/p>\n For more from the team at \u201cAn Arm and a Leg,\u201d subscribe to its weekly newsletter, First Aid Kit<\/a>. You can also\u00a0follow the show on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the social platform X<\/a>. And if you\u2019ve got stories to tell about the health care system, the producers\u00a0would love to hear from you<\/a>.<\/p>\n To hear all KFF Health News podcasts, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n And subscribe to \u201cAn Arm and a Leg\u201d on Spotify<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Pocket Casts<\/a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.<\/em><\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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