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An hour explaining the American health care system, specifically, why it is that costs keep rising. One story looks at the doctors, one at the patients and one at the insurance industry.

Prologue.
Former Bush Administration official David Frum explains a very surprising fact about Bush’s economic failure, as it relates to health care. Frum is a regular contributor to the radio show Marketplace. (5 minutes)

Act One. Dartmouth Atlas Shrugged.
Are doctors to blame for the rising costs?  NPR Science Correspondent Alix Spiegel reports on the shocking results of studies about varied health care spending. Hear more health care stories this week from Alix at npr.org. (18 minutes)

Act Two. Every CAT Scan has Nine Lives.
Or is the problem the patients?  Producer Lisa Pollak reports. (12 1/2 minutes)

Act Three. Who Would Win in a Fight Between a Polar Bear and an Insurance Company?
Or maybe the insurance companies are to blame? Producer Sarah Koenig reports. (12 1/2 minutes )

Act Four. Now What?
Host Ira Glass talks with Susan Dentzer, editor of the journal Health Affairs, about what current health reform proposals do to fix the rising costs of healthcare…And points at a surprising, kind of heartening phenomenon happening within the current debate. (6 minutes)

Episode 392: Someone Else’s Money

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This week, we bring you a deeper look inside the health insurance industry. The dark side of prescription drug coupons. A story about Pet Health Insurance, which is in its infancy, and how it is changing human behaviors—for example, if you have the pet health insurance, you bring your pet to the vet more often, and the vet makes more money and…well, you can see the parallels. And insurance company jargon, frighteningly decoded.

This show was a co-production with NPR News.

Prologue.
Host Ira Glass talks to Rob Lamberts, a doctor and blogger in Georgia, who describes the crazy world of medical billing, where armies of coders use several contradictory different systems of codes…and none of it makes us healthier. (5 minutes)

Act One. One Pill Two Pill, Red Pill Blue Pill.
Planet Money’s Chana Joffe-Walt explains why prescription drug coupons could actually be increasing how much we pay, and prevent us from even telling how much drugs cost. (13 1/2 minutes)

Act Two. Let’s Take Your Medical History.
Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson recount how four accidental steps led to enacting the very questionable system of employers paying for health care. (11 1/2 minutes)

Act Three. Insurance? Ruh Roh!
Planet Money correspondent David Kestenbaum investigates the growing popularity of pet insurance, and what it reveals about insurance for people. (14 minutes )

Act Four. Sorry Johnny… It’s Only Business.
This American Life producer Sarah Koenig reports on a very surprising reason why insurance companies dump members, and how this reasoning contradicts President Obama’s argument for what will lower health care costs. (11 1/2 minutes)

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Ira Glass better watch out!

Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo.

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“What I value most about my marriage is that it is separate and apart from a lot of the silliness of Washington, and Michelle is not part of that silliness . . . .

. . . The centrality of the Obama marriage to the president’s political brand opens a new chapter in the debate that has run through, even helped define, their union. Since he first began running for office in 1995, Barack and Michelle Obama have never really stopped struggling over how to combine politics and marriage: how to navigate the long absences, lack of privacy, ossified gender roles and generally stultifying rules that result when public opinion comes to bear on private relationships.

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Ira Glass on Sucking at Doing What You Love

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