This listener’s DIY project helps others deal with high medical bills
In April, Thomas Sanford, a medical student who regularly listens to “An Arm and a Leg,” set out to create a resource he could easily share with patients to help them deal with unaffordable medical bills.
In this short episode, host Dan Weisman talks with Sanford about how distributing charity care information on little cards has grown into an ever-growing list of resources for erasing medical debt. They discuss the inspiration behind his project, the role “An Arm and a Leg” listeners played in building it, and how others can contribute.
Dan Wiseman
Host and producer of “An Arm and a Leg.” Previously, Dan was a staff reporter for Marketplace and WBEZ in Chicago. His work also appears in All Things Considered, Marketplace, BBC, 99 Percent Invisible and Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Credits
Emily Pisacreta Producer Claire Davenport Producer Adam Raymonda Sound Therapist Ellen Weiss Editor Click to open transcript
Transcript: A listener’s DIY project helps others deal with high medical bills
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and: Hello who’s there. So here’s a story – a project – that has given me more encouragement than anything I can think of lately. It’s driven by you – by the listeners of this show.
One of my big dreams for An Arm and a Leg, almost from the beginning, has been to connect people, to help people learn to help each other.
I think I see the beginnings of winning.
It started with one listener, trying to do what he could for the people around him. We asked for advice, and asked people who got our First Aid Kit newsletter to get involved.
And now, with this help, our original listener has set out to create a tool that I believe can ultimately help a lot of people help each other.
It feels like the beginning of a virtuous cycle. And you can help it continue and grow.
Well, here’s the story – so far:
Thomas Sanford goes to medical school in Brooklyn. He says he’s listened to this show for years, but some of the things we’re talking about here became more vivid to him last fall, when he started his third year.
Thomas Sanford: … Where I get out of the classroom and start spending my days in the hospital interacting with patients and I appreciate that for people in my district in particular — which is one of the poorest areas of Brooklyn — that can be a financial death sentence. It will plunge you into debt that you can’t get out of. And I listened to your episode about Dollar For, the nonprofit that helps people apply for charity care.
and: We’ve talked about the dollar a lot over the past few years. Its founder, Jared Walker, has helped many people, including me, understand the power of charitable care in hospitals.
A few months ago, Jared’s small organization achieved a major milestone:
Eliminated more than $100 million in hospital bills in just a few years.
Jared Walker: We were able to do this without charging patients a single dollar.
and: That’s Jared, in a video he posted over the summer to mark the occasion.
Jared Walker: We are a non-profit organization. We help people eliminate hospital bills, often by implementing hospital financial assistance policies. These programs reduce or eliminate hospital bills for people within certain income requirements. The problem is they don’t tell you. So we do.
and: Now, after working in a hospital himself, Thomas Sanford decided to help spread the word.
He wrote to the folks at Dollar For, and they sent him a PDF for a “touch card” — which is the size of a business card.
“Are you struggling with hospital bills? Most hospitals offer bill waiver programs. On average, a family of four, earning less than $100,000 a year, would qualify. Dollar For can help — for free,” she says.
Then, there’s a web address written in large print, a QR code to scan – and on the back of the card, it’s all in Spanish.
Thomas Sanford: And I just went and printed thousands of them, and started distributing them to the population and giving them to patients.
and: Hand them out to other residents, so they can pass the cards on to their patients.
Thomas says he also left boxes of cards in the break room, so residents could get as many as they wanted. He then went to other local hospitals to distribute the cards in bulk.
Thomas Sanford: A lot of small hospitals or community clinics have a few business card holders, on the table in the waiting room, and I get a stack of them and put them in there.
and: And all of this is really cool. And then, Thomas did something else: he wrote to us – to tell us what he was doing, and ask for help.
Because over the months, as he handed out these cards, Thomas discovered: Charity care doesn’t necessarily cover everyone’s needs — like paying for prescription drugs.
Thomas Sanford: And honestly, I was busy doing all the medical stuff, trying to take care of people, and I wish I had the time to sit down with them, you know, and look for what would specifically help them, and I didn’t. So I was looking, and really hoping, very selfishly, for a source where I could say, this is your one-stop shop. It will almost certainly cover what you need. Hope this helps.
and: So he wrote to us asking us if he had taught us anything good. Frankly, we didn’t.
So we asked you for help. In our First Aid Kit newsletter, we told Thomas’ story, added a link to this PDF from Dollar For — because that seemed worth a pass — and did a couple other things:
First, we prepared our first draft—basically, an annotated list of resources that we would put in a one-page handout.
Secondly, we asked: Help! What are we missing here? Including: Has anyone already created a version of this?
And: I wrote again!
As it turns out, the two of you have worked on some cool online projects. One was from the non-profit PIRG – another group I have learned a lot from over the years. The other was actually created by the federal government.
And they were great! We’ve written about them in our first aid kit, with links. Other people have reported to us resources that weren’t on our original lists – we’ve added those..
So Thomas took it all and ran with it. Meaning: He began printing a rough draft to distribute.
Thomas Sanford: I keep a small collection of them in my backpack, where they’ve become fairly complete and vaguely viewable, and sometimes I’ll just say, wait, leave, come back and say, here you go.
and: He says: He succeeded. Tell me about this particularly dramatic example.
Thomas Sanford: I was in the emergency department and someone came in having a heart attack – very serious. This could kill you. Their only concern when they got there was, What’s this going to cost me? And it’s hard to have that conversation, but being able to say, look, this is a crappy first draft of something I’ve been working on. I hope this gives you a little comfort, but please, let me now focus on what is most important, which is keeping you alive.
and: Thomas recently wrote to us again, to say: This is the mysterious-looking copy I’ve been handing out. Can I get more help to improve?
We’re back with you – we posted Thomas’s draft in the First Aid Kit, asked if anyone could participate, and created a registration form.
And you’ve been promoting! Thomas says he added more resources and got help making things more beautiful.
Thomas Sanford: Just writing a few things about not having to use my period properly. Big things like maybe you name this document more correctly.
Call it help with your medical expenses.
and: He just shared the latest version with us, and says he could still use more help.
Thomas Sanford: If you know how to copy and edit, you can take my terrible descriptions and make them great. If you know graphic design and can turn my simple PDF into something more presentable, that would be great. Also, if you want to create a version of this, you can customize it for your own hospitals. Instead of a four-dollar link, link to your hospital’s charity care policy.
and: This is actually one of the coolest things. Thomas uses what is called a “Creative Commons” license. This basically means that anyone can take it, make copies of it, and make modifications to it.
Thomas Sanford: You can make your own version of it. You don’t need my permission. You can do whatever you want with it. The only thing you have to do is share it under the same license and share it freely
and: Give credit to the original creator, so people know where he started. But Thomas wants people to make it their own.
Thomas Sanford: I think that’s really the ideal situation: when people start taking it, they just create their own version, put it out there, and it will evolve on its own, and become the best thing it can be.
and: So, I hope you can see why I’m so excited about this project. I think it has incredible potential. I invite you to participate, however you want and however you can.
At Thomas’s suggestion: we are publishing a PDF of the current version. Print it out, make copies, and let us know how you use it.
We also publish a Google Doc that anyone can comment on.
We are publishing this registration form again, so you can volunteer to participate. Designers, editors, experts and translators.
Especially: If anyone has a knack for organizing groups of volunteers on a project like this, please get in touch. That would be really amazing.
You’ll find these links wherever you listen
And where we’ll continue researching this project is where it started – in our First Aid Kit newsletter. I would love for you to sign up. The place to do this is www dotarm and aleg show dot com, slash, first aid kit.
This is an arm and leg dot com offer, slash, first aid kit.
This was a little episode of Arm and Leg – a show about why health care costs are rising and what we can do about it: together – right?
We will return with a full episode soon. Until then, take care.
This episode of “Arm and a Leg” was produced by me, Dan Weisman, with assistance from Emily Pisacreta – and edited by Elaine Weiss. Adam Raymonda is our sound therapist.
Our music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions. Pia Bosco is our Advisory Director of Operations.
“Arm and Leg” is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. It is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues in America and a staple of KFF, an independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.
Zach Dyer is a senior audio producer at KFF Health News. He’s the editorial lead on this show.
And thank you to the Nonprofit News Institute for being our fiscal sponsor.
They allow us to accept tax deductible donations. You can learn more about INN at INN.org.
Finally, thanks to everyone who supported this exhibition financially.
You can join anytime at arm and leg show, dot com, slash: support.
“An Arm and a Leg” is a co-production between KFF Health News and Public Road Productions.
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