You have a part to play in your own care. Scripts included.
A book about the most expensive thing you will ever buy, and why you've never asked what it costs. Health care in the United States takes more of a family's income than its house does, and most of the money moves where the family can't see it. The book collects what you're already entitled to, says which of your manners are keeping you from using it, and gives you the sentences to say: to a doctor, a billing office, an insurer, a pharmacist, and the people behind them who don't take calls.
Your doctor expects you to choose. Your insurer expects you to appeal. Nobody told you.
In preparation. The book is being written now, in the open, and this page will carry the table of contents, the scripts as copyable text, a corrections log, and the buy link when there is one. Nothing here is medical or legal advice, and no clinician or lawyer has reviewed the book; the front matter says so, and so will this page.
You've paid a medical bill without reading it. You've nodded at something a doctor said and not asked again. You've been told no by an insurer and taken it. You're turning 65, having a baby, holding a diagnosis, or caring for someone who is. Or you're well, insured, paying for it, and not using it.
You want to be told what treatment to have; the book describes evidence and recommends nothing. You want a case for or against a particular health system; it takes the system as it is on the day you're in it. You want a villain; it doesn't supply one.
The Marriage Contract, 2027: the prenup you sign when you don't sign a prenup. October 2026.
Essays, papers, and how AI is used in this work: aporia.institute.