Arms and Legs and Podcasts, oh my!

Dan Weissmann is the Ferris Bueller of healthcare journalism. He makes the boring-yet-deadly serious mess of insurance not only listenable but impossible to ignore. If you are not listening to *An Arm and a Leg*, you are doing it wrong, says me, Mr. Bald Podcaster Cancer guy since 2007.

This new episode drops a "Reality Bites" about 2026. Premiums go up eighteen percent. The enhanced subsidies that kept millions of people afloat vanish. That means Emily Pisacreta, who earns 63K in New York, goes from paying around 400 a month to 880 a month with a four thousand dollar deductible. Same plan, double the cost, and if she earns just a hair less, she saves five grand. That is not a system. That is a casino built on people’s panic.

Lower income families get slammed too.

Someone making 23K sees premiums jump from 2 dollars a month to 72. Try living on 23K and coughing up 864 a year for the privilege of not going bankrupt. Insurers already know healthy people will drop out and sick people will be left holding the bag. Enrollment could collapse by half.

And while this dumpster fire burns, the government is cutting navigator funding by ninety percent. New York protects its program. North Carolina guts it. Families will now try to decode fine print without experts.

Emily lucked into Elisabeth Benjamin, who found hidden benefits and lower deductibles. Most people will not.

This is healthcare in America. A rigged game of “The Price is Right” where the wrong answer is death or debt.

EPISODE ➡️ https://armandalegshow.com/episode/insurance-in-2026/