Hey and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Jordan Calhoun, editor-in-chief of LifeHacker,

and filling in as guest host today while Megan's on vacation is LifeHackers' Health Editor, Beth

Skorrecki. How's it going, Beth? Hey, good to be here. Beth, today we're digging into this

impossible, uniquely American problem. We sure are, and that problem is navigating our nightmare

health care system and avoiding the outrageous costs that seem to come with everything health related.

That's right. And we're doing that with help from journalists and a fellow podcaster, Dan Weissman.

Medical debt is one of the major causes of bankruptcy. Medical debt is the number one reason people are in collections. It's, you know, it's our

credit rating. It's our everything. Like, this is not small potato. So learning everything you can.

And dedicating real time and energy to learning this and to practicing it. Like, if you can do

this, you can do anything. Dan is a radio producer and journalist based in Chicago and the host of a

podcast called An Arm and a Leg, which dives into the cost of the health care system.

Dan has also worked as a staff reporter for Marketplace in Chicago's WBEZ and has won awards for his investigative reporting, feature writing, and his production and hosting work in radio.

Beth, I imagine at some point you've been to a hospital. At some point, you've probably had a medical bill. At some point, you've probably like dealt with all this bureaucracy. What's the most frustrating part when you sort of step back and look at our health care system? To me, it's the fact that when you go and get care, whether it's an emergency or whether you know you have something like a surgery coming up and you know you're going to have to do something. All you know is that it's going to be

expensive. You don't know how much it's going to be. Even if you ask, sometimes they can't tell you.

And even if they tell you, you don't know what kind of bill you're going to get on the other end. Yeah, absolutely. For me, I mean, fortunately, knock on wood, I've never had to go to the emergency room for myself.

I've never had a surgery.

I've never had a broken bone.

So I've been really, really lucky.

And, you know, that is true as of today.

All of these things could happen, you know, an hour from now or tomorrow. And the thing that scares me the most is, to your point, the not knowing part, like, the knowing that it's going to be expensive. I don't know if I were to, you know, need stitches. I don't, I don't even know what's reasonable, to be honest. Like, if I already get stitches, is that a $50 thing? Or is that a $500 thing? Or is that a $5,000 thing? I honestly have no idea.

And I cannot tell you. And, you know, I've been lucky, too, that every time I've, you know, had some major medical issue or maybe not even that major, but every time I've had a medical issue, I've had good

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