Amanda Bennett (1) (1952–)

Bennett, a veteran of Pulitzer prize work, crafts a memoir of her struggle with the death of her husband. Not only is the book well written, it contains appropriate shifting chronology, philosophy in dealing with illness and death, and a journalist's investigative work to track the maze of medical options, treatments, doctors and costs. This should be read by anyone on either side of the universal health care debate who is interested in problems and solutions.

This was an Early Reviewer copy.

I don't want to belittle the author's experience, but I can't help but think of the modern version of this story. Girl gets sick, doesn't have health insurance, cannot afford treatment. Or: Girl refuses treatment and legally cannot receive the help she needs and cycles in and out of jail and homelessness.

Lori put a lot of work into her mental health -- but she should be damn glad she didn't get sick 20 or 30 years later. And she should also realize that many of her contemporaries without show more money didn't get the same level treatment she received. show less

“The Cost of Hope” is a memoir of the war Amanda Bennett and her husband, Terrence Foley, waged against the rare kidney cancer that eventually claimed his life. It is the story of love in desperation mode propelling a pitch battle for survival; a story of fears, frustrations, realities and delusions. It is peppered with small wins and little gains, but real victory, you know before you begin, remains beyond their grasp.

It’s tough. What may be tougher, however, is identifying the real show more opponent. Was the cancer defined by runaway cells in Foley’s body or — forgive the metaphor — by the runaway costs, avenues and warrens within the American healthcare system?

It is here that Bennett excels, applying her Pulitzer Prize-winning skills as a journalist to pry apart the layers defining our healthcare system today. That she does so with the eye of a grieving spouse increases the depth and strength of the work.

This is a story that adds, in a tangible way, to the healthcare debate dividing so many today. Because here’s the thing: this isn’t some tale of woe about poor, uneducated patients helplessly snarled in an unfeeling machine. It’s about a journalist at the top of her game and a Ph.D. who speaks at least five languages; a well-to-do couple so plied with health insurance that they can afford most any treatment; a pair so doggedly determined that every indicator predicts that they will beat the odds.

That they don’t is no medical mystery, but their odyssey does become a cautionary tale, the moral of which is familiar to us all: American medicine is broken. It ought to be fixed.

I won a review copy of this book on LibraryThing. show less

When Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and news editor Amanda Bennett learned her husband had cancer, she promised him that she would fight for his life and never give up. In The Cost of Hope she recounts exactly what the fight cost in human and financial terms. along the way, the reader learns a good deal about health care and some of the reasons that costs are spiraling out of control.

Bennett also asks searching questions about cancer treatment, drug studies that amount to "throwing the show more spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks" and whether the system helps or hurts sufferers. She wonders how families without her employer's excellent health insurance can even survive. She quantifies costs, compares them across hospitals and insurance companies and shows how difficult it is to make sensible cost decisions with minimal information.

The thread that binds this book together is Bennett's moving portrait of a family coping with long term medical crises over a period of years. So this is also a beautiful book about a young couple who fall in love in Beijing and raise a young family wherever her new jobs take them. We know the ending at the outset, which makes the chapters more poignant.

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding why US health care is among the most expensive in the world with results that are markedly worse. show less