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Cost of Living: Essays
A Best Book of 2022 - USA TODAY
Named one of the Chicago Public Library's "Best Books of 2022"
“ Astute, compassionate and lethally funny. Maloney is an exceptionally alert writer on whom nothing is lost, who sees everything with excruciating clarity. ” ― Sarah Manguso, The New York Times
The searing intimacy of Girl, Interrupted combines with the uncomfortable truths of The Empathy Exams in a collection of essays chronicling one woman’s experiences as both patient and caregiver, giving a unique perspective from both sides of the hospital bed.
What does it cost to live?
When we fall ill, our lives are itemized on a spreadsheet. A thousand dollars for a broken leg, a few hundred for a nasty cut while cooking dinner. Then there are the greater costs for even greater misfortunes. The car accidents, breast cancers, blood diseases, and dark depressions.
When Emily Maloney was nineteen she tried to kill herself. An act that would not only cost a great deal personally, but also financially, sending her down a dark spiral of misdiagnoses, years spent in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices, and tens of thousands owed in medical debt. To work to pay off this crippling burden, Emily becomes an emergency room technician. Doing the grunt work in a hospital, and taking care of patients at their most vulnerable moments, chronicling these interactions in searingly beautiful, surprising ways.
Shocking and often slyly humorous, Cost of Living is a brilliant examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers.
Named one of the Chicago Public Library's "Best Books of 2022"
“ Astute, compassionate and lethally funny. Maloney is an exceptionally alert writer on whom nothing is lost, who sees everything with excruciating clarity. ” ― Sarah Manguso, The New York Times
The searing intimacy of Girl, Interrupted combines with the uncomfortable truths of The Empathy Exams in a collection of essays chronicling one woman’s experiences as both patient and caregiver, giving a unique perspective from both sides of the hospital bed.
What does it cost to live?
When we fall ill, our lives are itemized on a spreadsheet. A thousand dollars for a broken leg, a few hundred for a nasty cut while cooking dinner. Then there are the greater costs for even greater misfortunes. The car accidents, breast cancers, blood diseases, and dark depressions.
When Emily Maloney was nineteen she tried to kill herself. An act that would not only cost a great deal personally, but also financially, sending her down a dark spiral of misdiagnoses, years spent in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices, and tens of thousands owed in medical debt. To work to pay off this crippling burden, Emily becomes an emergency room technician. Doing the grunt work in a hospital, and taking care of patients at their most vulnerable moments, chronicling these interactions in searingly beautiful, surprising ways.
Shocking and often slyly humorous, Cost of Living is a brilliant examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers.
240 pages, Paperback
First published February 8, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 207 reviews
September 13, 2021
I think I did a pretty good job.
April 10, 2022
Disappointing and ineffective. The premise on the book jacket and introductory pages are misleading. The essays are haphazard, conflicting, and don’t support the thesis of the book at all. What this book really is about is the author’s struggle with mental health, misdiagnosis, and experience working (barely) in the ER and then her job as a medical writer. The connection to “the cost of living” is made into a personal problem and lacks authority and relevant anecdotes. She started with a wonderful book about her unsuccessful suicide ended her up with major medical debt, and while horrible and upending this is, it’s magically wiped from her account and she moves on. The rest of the essays describe her experiences working with patients and questioning the medical decisions made by staff, raising wonderful questions, yet failing to connect it to a wider problem, with evidentiary support. I’m left knowing the healthcare world is expensive, yet the author doesn’t provide the reader with further concrete statements that deepen that thought.
February 7, 2022
In a essay-memoir like book, the author takes us on a journey through her life and experiences with medicine, therapists and mental illnesses. Having dozens of therapists that didnt help her, giving her countless of drugs that didnt do anything, and then working on a hospital and struggling while taking lithium. We get in her head to get why she acted the way she did with other people and different situations. And also, as the title says, how it affected her economic situation, since every little aspect of living costed her money.
Such an insightful view at the healthcare world. To be honest, i wasnt expecting to be that engaged (for no actual reason, just a me thing) but i actually loved reading this, it will never stop surprising me the amount of stuff that you have to pay in order to, literally, just live, and i loved to see her actual experience, it was really sincere and she didnt (it felt like) kept nothing from us, readers.
Thank u to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book !
Such an insightful view at the healthcare world. To be honest, i wasnt expecting to be that engaged (for no actual reason, just a me thing) but i actually loved reading this, it will never stop surprising me the amount of stuff that you have to pay in order to, literally, just live, and i loved to see her actual experience, it was really sincere and she didnt (it felt like) kept nothing from us, readers.
Thank u to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book !
November 23, 2021
Emily Maloney's Cost of Living is phenomenal. Maloney's observations on mental health and the state of medical care in America are sharp and, at turns, humorous and heart-wrenching. This brilliant collection of essays is a wake-up call, one that is rendered with nuance and compassion. Necessary reading for anyone in healthcare or anyone who has received healthcare, so basically everyone.
March 22, 2022
Maloney's essays offer her takes on the state of U.S. health care, a subject that has already garnered bucket loads of attention. But it was her diversity of firsthand experiences with the health care system from a host of different vantage points that drew me to buy this book. I was disappointed in part because the stories she tells lack context and perspective; they're incredibly self-involved tales without offering much insight for those of us who have not encountered her health challenges or held the myriad of jobs inside this industry that she did. That's what I was looking for here. Equally frustrating, many of the stories she tells feel disjointed and are not very well-written. More than any book I have read in a long time, this one badly needed an editor to work with the author to sharpen her vision for the book, clean up grammar and syntax, improve transitions and cut to the case faster.
July 3, 2024
I initially added this to my TBR based on the title, because I thought that it was going to be a book about the cost of living in the US - the cost of housing, food, medical care, etc, and the hard decisions that far too many people have to make between those things.
But as I listened to this, I started to realize that wasn't the cost of living that Maloney is talking about. Yes, much of her life centers around the medical field and industry, as both a patient and a caregiver, but the cost she's referring to intangible. A mental and emotional cost due to health issues that made the ACT of living exhausting and simply too much to cope with.
The essays in this book are straightforward, insightful mini-memoirs that speak to a larger issue of care in the US. Who deserves it, who has access to it, who can afford it, who can take advantage of it. What happens when the people who care for you struggle to care for themselves? How does that change the way we see caregivers? SHOULD it change the way we see them? Aren't they just people too? Or does one's chosen career preclude them from being human enough to struggle with things beyond their control and get help for them?
This was an excellent essay collection, and it really made me think about things from a perspective I had not previously examined. Highly recommended.
But as I listened to this, I started to realize that wasn't the cost of living that Maloney is talking about. Yes, much of her life centers around the medical field and industry, as both a patient and a caregiver, but the cost she's referring to intangible. A mental and emotional cost due to health issues that made the ACT of living exhausting and simply too much to cope with.
The essays in this book are straightforward, insightful mini-memoirs that speak to a larger issue of care in the US. Who deserves it, who has access to it, who can afford it, who can take advantage of it. What happens when the people who care for you struggle to care for themselves? How does that change the way we see caregivers? SHOULD it change the way we see them? Aren't they just people too? Or does one's chosen career preclude them from being human enough to struggle with things beyond their control and get help for them?
This was an excellent essay collection, and it really made me think about things from a perspective I had not previously examined. Highly recommended.
May 12, 2022
Probably one of the worst books I've read cover to cover. This book had so much potential but instead it was just a repetitive, rambling essay completely lacking a storyline. Sometimes entire paragraphs were poorly paraphrased and repeated 10 pages later.
I thought the book would talk about living with medical debt in the US and that I would gain insight on how different the system is in America compared to Canada where I am from, but instead she goes on 100 different tangents about different psych drugs, different jobs she had and mildly touches on her own parents mental health struggles.
I thought the book would talk about living with medical debt in the US and that I would gain insight on how different the system is in America compared to Canada where I am from, but instead she goes on 100 different tangents about different psych drugs, different jobs she had and mildly touches on her own parents mental health struggles.
April 17, 2024
Misdiagnosed and over-medicated, Emily Maloney ran up a five-figure medical debt at age 19, just trying to get help for disabling problems and not understanding the future ramifications. Her teenaged self obediently signed whatever consent and financial responsibility forms were put in front of her, not knowing, and not being told, she had other options.
Maloney writes extremely well and vividly describes, through facts about procedures and anecdotes about real people, including herself, the many disturbing aspects of our woefully inadequate healthcare system. The examples are sometimes amusing and concerning, entertaining and educational, all at once.
Getting training as an Emergency Medical Technician and going to work within the very system that basically enslaved her in order to pay off her medical debts gave Maloney the ability to describe the medical/psychiatric/pharmaceutical industrial complex from the viewpoints of both patient and participant and to shed light on the system’s deficiencies in a 360- degree way.
I am interested in this topic because I have worked in and around healthcare for 30 years, including
As Executive Secretary to a CFO/co-administrator of a small acute-care children’s hospital;
As a high-level assistant and conference coordinator to two different research physicians at a large, well-known hospital/medical center, including two years managing the admin side of the Bioethics Office;
In regulatory compliance at two different for-profit health-related companies (vision care insurance and dental supplies / equipment manufacturing); and
For the past 18 years (until last summer) as a freelance grant writer with the great majority of my client hours billed to nonprofit community health clinics.
Although I do not have a minute of clinical training or experience, just from working on the admin and financial side, I have seen some things and I can tell you it’s often not pretty or patient-centric. (See my “Soapbox” book shelf here on GR.)
The essays in this collection were written for various publications at various times, so there is some overlap in the stories and redundancy in the themes Maloney emphasizes, but this did not diminish the impact of her very empathetic explanations of what goes on in areas such as prescribing practices and drug dependency, relationships between medical staff and patients and each other, the drama surrounding emergency room crises, dealing with extreme medical situations and patients’ families, her relationships with her many, many psychologists and psychiatrists, and her reactions to all of it. The writing throughout most of the pieces is really excellent.
While many of her stories involve co-workers and patients at her jobs, she also covers her own background, her troubled family life and parents who couldn’t provide the proper resources because of their own problems, and her early jobs such as dog-washing at Pet Smart to be able to buy groceries as a teenager, while navigating mental and physical health problems, instead of focusing on her current and future education. She does get into college later though and visits her parents on a weekend trip home.
I find my dad standing in his robe and slippers in front of the sink, sipping Raisin Bran and milk out of a glass Pyrex measuring cup.
We are out of spoons,” he says and points. And he’s right -- all the silverware they own is in the sink: a mountain of everyday flatware, good silver, some plastic forks, and some knives I recognize from my apartment, maybe two hundred pieces or more altogether.
“Huh,” I say. “I see that.” I’m trying to practice my reflective listening skills. At that point, I was enrolled in a course for people who need things like reflective listening skills to cover for poor impulse control and emotional deregulation, although my classmates’ complaints consist mostly of statements like “the schizophrenic in my group home eats all the good cereal,” so I’m not sure I fit there either.
These accounts are never whiny or depressing, but thoughtful in the context of what those experiences meant in relation to her future and failure to get the help she needed. In other essays she goes into the effects of the psychiatric drugs on her body, brain, and finances and her own mental state during periods of crisis. But somehow in the midst of it, she always seems to manage to hold on to hope for improvement.
I didn’t want to be one of those patients—too gloomy and obnoxious. I knew what those people looked like in real life—entitled women, or girls. Look at me, they’d say. They said it in the way they spoke – a raised voice or a lowered one, never a normal tempo or volume; the little rows of scars they lined up on their forearms or inside their thighs; the self-inflicted cigarette burns, the disease of starving oneself or throwing up until they became, magically, a certain size. So I had to be careful, to always play back old conversations we’d had, to make sure I was not appearing too dependent or too happy or too sad.
I wanted to be like the woman who crossed the street, who ducked in front of traffic, nodding in the direction of the car that had stopped. She had somewhere to go, was rational, not emotional, smart enough to walk to school without failing to dry her hair. I got lost when I showered – I’d shave just one leg, then forget about the other. I’d walk to places without the right clothes and then realize how freezing it was. Maybe she was a nursing student. That was who I was supposed to be. I was going to be someone, or something, if I could only figure out what that was.
The last essays in the collection see Maloney in a later career phase, when she’s working as a medical publications manager or a journalist attending medical conferences dedicated to gastroenterology or pain management, respectively. The one about pain management and the plight of patients addicted to opiates is particularly moving.
These essays focus on what a high human cost is often involved in trying to get well when the healthcare system’s chaos, inefficiency, and sometimes venal motives hinder that goal. This collection is well worth reading if you have any interest in this topic, and perhaps even if you don’t. Highly recommended.
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher, Henry Holt & Co.
Maloney writes extremely well and vividly describes, through facts about procedures and anecdotes about real people, including herself, the many disturbing aspects of our woefully inadequate healthcare system. The examples are sometimes amusing and concerning, entertaining and educational, all at once.
Getting training as an Emergency Medical Technician and going to work within the very system that basically enslaved her in order to pay off her medical debts gave Maloney the ability to describe the medical/psychiatric/pharmaceutical industrial complex from the viewpoints of both patient and participant and to shed light on the system’s deficiencies in a 360- degree way.
I am interested in this topic because I have worked in and around healthcare for 30 years, including
As Executive Secretary to a CFO/co-administrator of a small acute-care children’s hospital;
As a high-level assistant and conference coordinator to two different research physicians at a large, well-known hospital/medical center, including two years managing the admin side of the Bioethics Office;
In regulatory compliance at two different for-profit health-related companies (vision care insurance and dental supplies / equipment manufacturing); and
For the past 18 years (until last summer) as a freelance grant writer with the great majority of my client hours billed to nonprofit community health clinics.
Although I do not have a minute of clinical training or experience, just from working on the admin and financial side, I have seen some things and I can tell you it’s often not pretty or patient-centric. (See my “Soapbox” book shelf here on GR.)
The essays in this collection were written for various publications at various times, so there is some overlap in the stories and redundancy in the themes Maloney emphasizes, but this did not diminish the impact of her very empathetic explanations of what goes on in areas such as prescribing practices and drug dependency, relationships between medical staff and patients and each other, the drama surrounding emergency room crises, dealing with extreme medical situations and patients’ families, her relationships with her many, many psychologists and psychiatrists, and her reactions to all of it. The writing throughout most of the pieces is really excellent.
While many of her stories involve co-workers and patients at her jobs, she also covers her own background, her troubled family life and parents who couldn’t provide the proper resources because of their own problems, and her early jobs such as dog-washing at Pet Smart to be able to buy groceries as a teenager, while navigating mental and physical health problems, instead of focusing on her current and future education. She does get into college later though and visits her parents on a weekend trip home.
I find my dad standing in his robe and slippers in front of the sink, sipping Raisin Bran and milk out of a glass Pyrex measuring cup.
We are out of spoons,” he says and points. And he’s right -- all the silverware they own is in the sink: a mountain of everyday flatware, good silver, some plastic forks, and some knives I recognize from my apartment, maybe two hundred pieces or more altogether.
“Huh,” I say. “I see that.” I’m trying to practice my reflective listening skills. At that point, I was enrolled in a course for people who need things like reflective listening skills to cover for poor impulse control and emotional deregulation, although my classmates’ complaints consist mostly of statements like “the schizophrenic in my group home eats all the good cereal,” so I’m not sure I fit there either.
These accounts are never whiny or depressing, but thoughtful in the context of what those experiences meant in relation to her future and failure to get the help she needed. In other essays she goes into the effects of the psychiatric drugs on her body, brain, and finances and her own mental state during periods of crisis. But somehow in the midst of it, she always seems to manage to hold on to hope for improvement.
I didn’t want to be one of those patients—too gloomy and obnoxious. I knew what those people looked like in real life—entitled women, or girls. Look at me, they’d say. They said it in the way they spoke – a raised voice or a lowered one, never a normal tempo or volume; the little rows of scars they lined up on their forearms or inside their thighs; the self-inflicted cigarette burns, the disease of starving oneself or throwing up until they became, magically, a certain size. So I had to be careful, to always play back old conversations we’d had, to make sure I was not appearing too dependent or too happy or too sad.
I wanted to be like the woman who crossed the street, who ducked in front of traffic, nodding in the direction of the car that had stopped. She had somewhere to go, was rational, not emotional, smart enough to walk to school without failing to dry her hair. I got lost when I showered – I’d shave just one leg, then forget about the other. I’d walk to places without the right clothes and then realize how freezing it was. Maybe she was a nursing student. That was who I was supposed to be. I was going to be someone, or something, if I could only figure out what that was.
The last essays in the collection see Maloney in a later career phase, when she’s working as a medical publications manager or a journalist attending medical conferences dedicated to gastroenterology or pain management, respectively. The one about pain management and the plight of patients addicted to opiates is particularly moving.
These essays focus on what a high human cost is often involved in trying to get well when the healthcare system’s chaos, inefficiency, and sometimes venal motives hinder that goal. This collection is well worth reading if you have any interest in this topic, and perhaps even if you don’t. Highly recommended.
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher, Henry Holt & Co.
February 11, 2022
What a unique look inside the medical industry. Lots of food for thought as I’ve often wondered myself what is necessary when evaluating my options when sick. Essays always have a little ebb and flow and I have to say this flowed very well for the first 50% and then lost me a bit. I’ll still be recommending this and sharing with friends who are constantly dealing with ongoing medical bills.
May 5, 2022
For me, this book was all over the place. Not enough detail about the backstory, and not enough to make me super sympathetic to the author. And not enough detail about the medical establishment either. Also, if I had a $128k plus bonus job, I'd be there for a LONG time.
May 3, 2022
I was sent an Advance Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
There were wonderful bits of storytelling here, but the choice to publish this as essays feels like a total cop out. This content, strung together more expertly, would work as a memoir — that is, it would make a good memoir if there were more feeling connecting these facts.
I felt jostled by the order of the essays but it is a good, hopeful sign that I’d have liked to know more about the author. I think she was failed by overly passive editors. It feels like no one pushed her to do this, only better.
There were wonderful bits of storytelling here, but the choice to publish this as essays feels like a total cop out. This content, strung together more expertly, would work as a memoir — that is, it would make a good memoir if there were more feeling connecting these facts.
I felt jostled by the order of the essays but it is a good, hopeful sign that I’d have liked to know more about the author. I think she was failed by overly passive editors. It feels like no one pushed her to do this, only better.
March 17, 2023
Such an excellent exploration of the healthcare system, the cost of systematizing human lives, and what it takes out of us to be part and parcel of a toxic system.
I recommend this book to anyone living in America, and it’s so well written!
I recommend this book to anyone living in America, and it’s so well written!
March 11, 2022
Cost of Living is an astonishing read. It is at once deeply personal and fiercely political in its exploration of the US healthcare system. Maloney is never didactic or burdened with intention; her dexterousness as a writer allows her story to unfold in an organic way that never feels forced or heavy-handed. I would read anything Maloney writes, and, as someone who has struggled to navigate the healthcare system, this book especially hit home.
January 18, 2022
Note* I listed to the audiobook edition, but this edition is not listed in Goodreads. The book was read by the author and I enjoyed her straightforward, and nearly, but not quite, void of emotion tone. It was fitting with the subject matter.
In her collectionCost of Living: Essays Emily Maloney covers many facets of her life and career. During college, Maloney survived a suicide attempt, but spent much of her adult life saddled with medical debt from this experience. She writes about a toxic relationship with a therapist, whom Maloney sought treatment from during her 20's. This therapist prescribed dozens of pills, many of which complicated Maloney's mental and physical health issues. Maloney would end up working as an emergency room technician, a job that allowed her to witness the intersection of profit and human care, noticing the deep flaws in our medical system. Later, she would work in clinical bioethics, including attending medical conferences, giving her insight into medical marketing.
Sharp and damning, Maloney will make you consider both your personal and societal costs of living. Her essays force the reader to consider the financial and emotional toll that our current medical system is placing on citizens. It is a holistic look that includes for-profit medicine, medical research, government policies, and the lives of both patients and their loved ones. As health care remains a hot-button issue, Maloney's experience and insight adds an important voice to the conversation.
I highly recommend!
In her collectionCost of Living: Essays Emily Maloney covers many facets of her life and career. During college, Maloney survived a suicide attempt, but spent much of her adult life saddled with medical debt from this experience. She writes about a toxic relationship with a therapist, whom Maloney sought treatment from during her 20's. This therapist prescribed dozens of pills, many of which complicated Maloney's mental and physical health issues. Maloney would end up working as an emergency room technician, a job that allowed her to witness the intersection of profit and human care, noticing the deep flaws in our medical system. Later, she would work in clinical bioethics, including attending medical conferences, giving her insight into medical marketing.
Sharp and damning, Maloney will make you consider both your personal and societal costs of living. Her essays force the reader to consider the financial and emotional toll that our current medical system is placing on citizens. It is a holistic look that includes for-profit medicine, medical research, government policies, and the lives of both patients and their loved ones. As health care remains a hot-button issue, Maloney's experience and insight adds an important voice to the conversation.
I highly recommend!
September 11, 2021
Fascinating read that dives deep into the goats emotional and financial of our flawed medical system. I read somewhere it reminded them of Nickel & Dimed which feels apt. Maloney’s depth and breadth of experience with the medical world is unique. I’m grateful she wrote a book. I feel like she’s asking essential questions. About pain, pain management, billing, mental health, patient care, costs and the intersection of all these things and more. I hope a lot of people read and consider this book. There’s so much to mull. I was deeply impressed by her ability to show the humanity of everyone in the book. It would have been easy to demonize specific players but she sees them as they are, flawed humans existing in a flawed system.
Though I really want to track her psychiatrist and give her a piece of my mind.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advance copy.
Though I really want to track her psychiatrist and give her a piece of my mind.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advance copy.
April 4, 2023
I hated this -- incredibly immature, myopic and disappointing. The author takes 20-something different medications over a five year period but turns out she maybe doesn't really have any mental health issues? But that doesn't stop her from wanting some -- insert cliche about how she was really good at puzzles/math/whatever when she's younger and a lot of wondering about how "weird" she is.
Really stretches the importance of her hospital work + oh, her medical debt, it truly sorta magically just goes away?? So if you thought this was gonna be some book about the systemic problems of the US healthcare system at large, it's not. But what really agitated me the most is the author dismissing other people's very real mental health issues weren't serious?? She put the words "panic attacks" in italics?? Girl, WTF??
Really stretches the importance of her hospital work + oh, her medical debt, it truly sorta magically just goes away?? So if you thought this was gonna be some book about the systemic problems of the US healthcare system at large, it's not. But what really agitated me the most is the author dismissing other people's very real mental health issues weren't serious?? She put the words "panic attacks" in italics?? Girl, WTF??
June 9, 2022
This being described as a cross between Girl, Interrupted and The Empathy Exams had me immediately wanting to read this. Maloney’s observations on living with mental illness in this country, and her stories of navigating the healthcare system, are heart-wrenching and visceral. She shares both personal experiences as a patient and those of patients she got to know through her various roles in the medical field. Each of them sheds a light on the ways in which our medical system takes a toll, physically, emotionally, and financially. Releases on 2/8. For fans of The Beauty in the Breaking.
Thank you to Henry Holt and Netgalley for providing me with a free review copy. All opinions are my own.
Thank you to Henry Holt and Netgalley for providing me with a free review copy. All opinions are my own.
September 21, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
These book of essays is quite interesting. The essays vary between view of being a patient and having to pay off medical debt as well as her experience dealing with psychiatrists and the cost of medications. On the flip side, she worked in various medical positions including the ER.
These book of essays is quite interesting. The essays vary between view of being a patient and having to pay off medical debt as well as her experience dealing with psychiatrists and the cost of medications. On the flip side, she worked in various medical positions including the ER.
July 30, 2021
What this woman went through was amazing. I admire her overall strength. I devoured this book in 2 settings. A must read. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving this book in this manner had no bearing on this review.
October 29, 2021
Emily Maloney’s Cost of Living is a series of essays that, when taken as a whole, comprise an interesting memoir of the author’s intimate experience with America’s healthcare system. First as a patient, and then as a caregiver herself, Maloney offers a behind the scenes look that will be probably be disconcerting and scary to some readers while confirming the darkest fears of others who have had a little more experience with how the system works in this country.
For Emily Maloney, it all started when she tried to kill herself as a nineteen-year-old. Maloney’s attempt at taking her own life may have been unsuccessful, but it left her saddled with an enormous medical debt for treatment that she would struggle to pay off for years to come. The failed attempt also meant that Maloney would be seeing mental health doctors and taking a series of psychiatric drugs for years — treatments and drugs that sometimes seem to have done as much harm as good. Ironically enough, in order to pay off her past healthcare debts and to be able to continue affording her ongoing treatments, Maloney decided to work in the healthcare industry herself.
What she learned firsthand about billings and collections, hospitals, emergency rooms, medical staffs, and pharmaceutical companies is enough to make anyone uneasy about dealing with the system. Maloney’s essays do not paint a pretty picture. She speaks of patients and insurance companies being gouged by the purposeful uncharging of doctors and hospitals determined to maximize profits. She tells us about the burned out staffs so common to emergency rooms and the minimal level of care that most patients ever receive in them. She speaks to the indignities and dangers of being treated in a training hospital or emergency room. And using her own experiences with large pharmaceutical companies as background, she gives a thorough indictment of the waste and borderline illegal practices that make medicine so expensive to those who desperately need it for their survival.
Bottom Line: Cost of Living certainly offers a bleak look at the US healthcare system. While what Emily Maloney has to say about the system will not come as a surprise to most people who have had to deal with major health problems of their own or those of family members, it will serve as a warning to other more fortunate readers who have yet experienced it all for themselves. It will open some eyes. Despite her shaky start in life, the author has achieved much, and it would be interesting to hear her story in a more traditionally constructed memoir that focuses on how she did it.
Review Copy provided by Henry Holt & Company
Cost of Living to be published on February 8, 2022
For Emily Maloney, it all started when she tried to kill herself as a nineteen-year-old. Maloney’s attempt at taking her own life may have been unsuccessful, but it left her saddled with an enormous medical debt for treatment that she would struggle to pay off for years to come. The failed attempt also meant that Maloney would be seeing mental health doctors and taking a series of psychiatric drugs for years — treatments and drugs that sometimes seem to have done as much harm as good. Ironically enough, in order to pay off her past healthcare debts and to be able to continue affording her ongoing treatments, Maloney decided to work in the healthcare industry herself.
What she learned firsthand about billings and collections, hospitals, emergency rooms, medical staffs, and pharmaceutical companies is enough to make anyone uneasy about dealing with the system. Maloney’s essays do not paint a pretty picture. She speaks of patients and insurance companies being gouged by the purposeful uncharging of doctors and hospitals determined to maximize profits. She tells us about the burned out staffs so common to emergency rooms and the minimal level of care that most patients ever receive in them. She speaks to the indignities and dangers of being treated in a training hospital or emergency room. And using her own experiences with large pharmaceutical companies as background, she gives a thorough indictment of the waste and borderline illegal practices that make medicine so expensive to those who desperately need it for their survival.
Bottom Line: Cost of Living certainly offers a bleak look at the US healthcare system. While what Emily Maloney has to say about the system will not come as a surprise to most people who have had to deal with major health problems of their own or those of family members, it will serve as a warning to other more fortunate readers who have yet experienced it all for themselves. It will open some eyes. Despite her shaky start in life, the author has achieved much, and it would be interesting to hear her story in a more traditionally constructed memoir that focuses on how she did it.
Review Copy provided by Henry Holt & Company
Cost of Living to be published on February 8, 2022
September 23, 2021
I couldn't put this book down and read it over the course of a day. I was mostly interested in the author's history of suicide and in- and out-patient treatments. But as I read more, the viewpoint of a medical professional in tens of thousands of dollars in medical-related debt intrigued me even more. How billing is handled, the waste and upcharges, as well as how medical research is publicized by big pharma and how blackbox psych meds are reported on were touched on in terms those of us not in the field can understand and possibly relate to.
I enjoyed Maloney's honesty in writing about her history (family, medical and financial) and treatments, which will hopefully lead readers to think about and discuss the bigger picture questions like the cost of medical treatment and pay scale of those administering our care.
I enjoyed Maloney's honesty in writing about her history (family, medical and financial) and treatments, which will hopefully lead readers to think about and discuss the bigger picture questions like the cost of medical treatment and pay scale of those administering our care.
January 2, 2023
A series of essays about the various failures of the American health care system. Or at least, that's what I thought and hoped it was going to be about... instead, it was a stream-of-consciousness memoir about the author's own personal physical and mental health struggles.
But, she's also an EMT, and has lots of interesting stories from the E.R. in this book which I found entertaining and intriguing enough. Food for thought about pain management, different personalities and different diagnosis (all over the map) that lead one into an E.R. Also some background info on what goes on at Big Pharma conferences.
But, she's also an EMT, and has lots of interesting stories from the E.R. in this book which I found entertaining and intriguing enough. Food for thought about pain management, different personalities and different diagnosis (all over the map) that lead one into an E.R. Also some background info on what goes on at Big Pharma conferences.
August 9, 2021
If you read The Beauty in Breaking and loved it, this book is for you! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Going into this book I thought it was more so about Emily’s mental health journey, but the majority of the book focuses on her work in the healthcare system. Emily Maloney gives an interesting perspective into the healthcare system in America as both a patient and as a healthcare professional. It was a quick and easy read, the stories flowed nicely and it was very well written.
July 31, 2021
Maloney’s book is real, raw, and thoughtful. I picked it up because the jacket referenced The Empathy Exams, which was spot on. Fans of that book will adore this one, which stays with you long after you finish it. Highly recommend.
September 16, 2021
I had no idea that medicine and our f*ck*ed up healthcare system could be made so accessible and personal. Reading about Emily's work as an ER tech, a student, and a patient gave a multifaceted view to things that often seem obscure and inaccessible. Highly recommend.
November 13, 2021
Review to come.
December 11, 2021
A compelling collection of essays. A new perspective on our healthcare system and the inequities that exist. Moving and humorous.
December 21, 2023
Intriguing premise but fell short - with each subsequent essay I found myself questioning the author's introspection and insight more and more.
May 11, 2022
"The ER it's a great place to go if you're having a heart attack or stroke or if you are in an accident of some kind, though fewer patients are doing that anymore either, and the ones who do now have COVID on top of their traumatic injuries or illness. Historically, if you can't stop vomiting or can't breathe, you're supposed to go to the ER. This is less true if you need something like Dilaudid, which is the sort of thing people used to come in for more frequently but can't anymore. If you came for pain we just treated the pain where it was, they sent you off with referral to your primary care physician. There were no pain clinical referrals at our ER just see your doctor and that was it."~pg.210
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Thoughts~
A facinating collection on the American Health Care system from both sides of the Hospital bed.
Maloney's essays offer a unique perspective on staying alive in Capitalist America. She writes from the personal point of view as the patient and the otherside as the caregiver in a Hospital. Eventhough I'm in Canada and our Health Care system is better than our neighbors in the US, nothing is perfect, there are mistreatments and misdiagnosis, treating patients as numbers in a chart instead of human beings. I was immersed in her words and how she conveyed both experiences in the same setting. And the inner working of a Hospital. It was incredibly eye opening and well done. There is no books out there like this one! A must read!
Thank You to @henryholtbooks for sending me this book, opinions are my own.
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
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🌿
Thoughts~
A facinating collection on the American Health Care system from both sides of the Hospital bed.
Maloney's essays offer a unique perspective on staying alive in Capitalist America. She writes from the personal point of view as the patient and the otherside as the caregiver in a Hospital. Eventhough I'm in Canada and our Health Care system is better than our neighbors in the US, nothing is perfect, there are mistreatments and misdiagnosis, treating patients as numbers in a chart instead of human beings. I was immersed in her words and how she conveyed both experiences in the same setting. And the inner working of a Hospital. It was incredibly eye opening and well done. There is no books out there like this one! A must read!
Thank You to @henryholtbooks for sending me this book, opinions are my own.
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
February 1, 2022
Emily Maloney has experienced the health system inside and out. In this series of personal essays, she explores her own misdiagnoses, which lead to incorrect medications, the side effects of which lead to further misdiagnoses, making things worse and worse. All of these misdiagnoses, understandably, lead to a lot of medical debt. which lead to regular calls from collection departments. The medical debt meant she had to get a job. She started as a medical technician. Most people don’t know what med techs are and just assume they’re nurses. And granted, they do some of the same things such as starting IVs. One thing she occasionally did while a med tech was help out with billing the patients. So they’d end up with the same exorbitant, unpayable bills that she was working extra hours to try to pay. The irony is not lost on her.
Due to her medial condition, her attempt to become a certified EMT fails, although she does complete a fair amount of the training. And with all of this medical background, and college writing training, she ends up working at a pharmaceutical company as a technical writer. Writing about drugs. Like the ones she was wrongly taking for many years that caused her harm and bad side effects. And which cost her a lot of money. And so the cycle continues. Few people understand it like Ms. Maloney and few people can write about it so well. Medical issues of all kinds are a very timely issue. This book should be widely read.
Due to her medial condition, her attempt to become a certified EMT fails, although she does complete a fair amount of the training. And with all of this medical background, and college writing training, she ends up working at a pharmaceutical company as a technical writer. Writing about drugs. Like the ones she was wrongly taking for many years that caused her harm and bad side effects. And which cost her a lot of money. And so the cycle continues. Few people understand it like Ms. Maloney and few people can write about it so well. Medical issues of all kinds are a very timely issue. This book should be widely read.
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