If you need medical care, it’s like you’ve entered a casino, playing for your financial life, with the deck stacked against you. Lucky for us, we get insight , and tips the dealer WON’T tell you, from ace reporter Celia Llopis-Jepsen.

To start with, she got an executive from a health-care company to talk honestly , maybe more honestly than he realized , about how his company and others are playing the game, when they send patients bills for huge amounts.

Here’s what else she found, when she investigated an $80,000 bill one man got: For COVID patients, including the guy in Celia’s story, lots of providers are legally required to just take what insurance gives them; once insurance pays, and once the patient has paid any co-pays or deductibles that are part of their policy , those providers aren’t allowed to chase patients for more.

Those are providers who took some of the $175 billion in bailout funds that Congress allocated in March. Don’t expect your provider to just tell you if that rule applies to your case. (That $80,000 bill did not include a footnote saying, “Once insurance pays us, you can forget all about this.”)

But if you get a bill for COVID treatment, you can make your own luck and look up the provider yourself. Because Celia found a government database where you can SEE if your provider took those funds.

We also like Celia’s Expert tip sheet for pushing back against your medical bills.

… and her first big medical-bill story, A Kansan’s $50k Medical Bill Shows That You Don’t Always Owe What You’re Charged, is packed with insight too.

NOTE: Note: When this episode was first posted, our host mis-pronounced the first name of a man who received an $80,000 bill. He is Anil Gharmalkar. The audio has been corrected.

**

We are bringing you these self-defense lessons every two weeks from here on out. That’s thanks to direct support from listeners.  We’d love for you to support us: https://armandalegshow.com/support/