Ellen Weiss
Editor, An Arm and a Leg
About
Ellen Weiss is an award-winning journalist and leader with more than 40 years experience working in audio, video and digital newsrooms. Most recently, as Washington Bureau Chief and Vice President of The E. W. Scripps Company, she created a multimedia national investigative team and launched podcasting for the company. While there, she received her forth Peabody Award for the “Under the Radar” investigative series and the RFK’s Journalism Grand Prize for the investigative documentary “A Broken Trust,” a project highlighting the lack of justice for survivors of sexual assault on tribal lands.
Prior to that she spent nearly 30 years at NPR and served as Senior Vice President of News. In that role, she oversaw global expansion of NPR News, the creation of award-winning programs an investigative unit, podcasts and the digital integration of the newsroom
Weiss is a graduate of Smith College with a B.A. in international relations. She and her family live in Washington, D.C.
Podcasts
Stories
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Sick Note, pt. 2: Dang
Dan’s COVID hung on there for a while, kept him SUPER tired. Yoinks. Back in a couple weeks!
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Sick Note: Dan has COVID. (He's fine, but ...)
He's kinda tired. Back in 2 weeks with a full episode!
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Fighting for the Right to Help
It’s illegal to advise someone who’s being sued for medical debt. (Unless you’re a lawyer.) As in, you could go to jail. Two New Yorkers are fighting to change that.
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Swimming with sharks
Pharma and insurance companies play devious, clever games, competing for dollars. They’re sharks! And they want to eat us alive.
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How to avoid the crappiest health insurance.
One journalist almost got roped into a scam. Plus, top health insurance nerds teach us how to find and read the fine print.
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The Insurance Warrior takes on a $61B Company
When Mattew Lientz needed surgery to save his life, his insurance wouldn’t cover it. Enter: Laurie Todd, the Insurance Warrior. Her first task: Figuring out who Matthew was really fighting, and how big the battle really was.
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Meet the Insurance Warrior
In 2005, Laurie Todd needed surgery to save her life. Her insurance company had no intention of paying for it. She went to war. Won. And has been helping other do the same ever since.
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A legendary lawyer sued hospitals for price-gouging their patients. And got his butt handed to him.
The lawyer was Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, the lawyer who beat Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Later, he launched a series of ill-fated national lawsuits aimed at getting non-profit hospitals to quit price-gouging low-income patients, and chasing them hard for...
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We’re back! Starting Aug 19. And we’ve got some doozies for you.
We’ve been on a hiatus for a minute, and we are SO excited about what we’re coming back with.These are stories we’ve been collecting for months—some of them for more than a year—and they’re big.
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A whole book about fighting effed-up medical bills? Yes, please.
For years, at ProPublica, Marshall Allen has been exposing health care grifters. (He’s our kind of guy.)Now, he's written a book… about how to fight back. It’s called “Never Pay the First Bill.” We talked. It was a whole vibe.