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As we settle into the new year, we have two small doses of good news.

First, a new federal rule could help cut through one health care issue. Host Dan Weissmann talked about the rule — which requires hospitals to make public the prices they negotiate with insurers — in a short conversation with his former public-radio colleague, Niala Boodhoo, for the daily-news podcast “Axios Today.”

You’ll find more detail on that rule in this story from reporter Celia Llopis-Jepsen, whose reporting about a $50,000 “air ambulance” ride formed the core of a recent episode about how consumers get squeezed by insurers on one side and providers on the other.

Later in the episode, a listener describes how he used what he learned from “An Arm and a Leg” to head off an insurance nightmare.

Here’s a transcript for this episode.

“An Arm and a Leg” is a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions.

To keep in touch with “An Arm and a Leg,” subscribe to the newsletter. You can also follow the show on Facebook and Twitter. And if you’ve got stories to tell about the health care system, the producers would love to hear from you.

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Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Dan Weissmann

Kaiser Health News

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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