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The Living Dispatch publishes first-person accounts about what consumer health products actually cost in the United States, and what people paid before they found an alternative.

We are paid a commission when a reader buys a product we write about. That is the entire business model, and we would rather say it here than bury it. We do not practice journalism, we do not employ reporters, and nothing published here is journalism or medical advice.

Personal accounts published on this site describe one individual's experience. Individual results vary.

• I answered for my husband's hearing loss for two years. I thought I was helping.

  A retired school secretary from Terre Haute kept the conversation moving for both of them — at the counter, on the phone, at her own kitchen table. She understood what it had cost on the day a pharmacist stopped talking to him.

• They thought I was losing my memory. I was losing the first three words of every sentence.

  A retired shop teacher from Erie spent two years being talked about instead of talked to. What he found had nothing to do with his memory — and everything to do with a $4,995 number he never questioned.

• For four years I said I couldn't afford them. I'd had the money since 2019.

  A retired medical office manager from Toledo spent thirty-one years explaining benefits to other people. It took her four years to find the one that applied to her.

• I answered for my husband for two years. I thought I was being helpful.

  A retired school secretary from Muncie kept the conversation moving for both of them — at the counter, on the phone, at her own kitchen table. She understood what it had cost on the day a pharmacist stopped talking to him.

• For three years I thought saying "What?" was less embarrassing than wearing one. I was keeping score wrong.

  A retired electrician from Wilkes-Barre spent three years protecting his pride at a card table on Thursday nights. What the other men were actually seeing had nothing to do with his ears.

• I spent forty-one years catching suppliers who were lying to me. I had this one backwards.

  A retired freight buyer from Rockford was certain the $99 hearing aids were the scam. When he finally ran both quotes the way he'd run every quote of his career, the number that couldn't be explained wasn't the small one.