Out of Patients
with Matthew Zachary
Welcome to 2026: The Year of the Patient where the sick shall inherit the ballot.
Apparently I’m A Healthcare Policy Guy Now: My Appearance on Disruptive Dialogue with Chuck Melendi
After 30 years in patient advocacy, I seem to have wandered into healthcare policy. A conversation with Chuck Melendi about insurance, incentives, political power, and what happens when patients stop merely navigating the system and start organizing to change it.
Out of Patients EP4534: Your Benefits May Vary: Rebecca Bloom
Rebecca Bloom spent decades inside employee benefits law before helping women navigate cancer, insurance, disability, work, and survival. This conversation exposes the hidden administrative labor patients inherit the second they get sick.
Out of Patients EP453: Mission, Margin, and the Women Left Waiting: Vasanta Pundarika
Women delay care while healthcare systems optimize around assumptions that no longer reflect how people live. Former healthcare investment banker Vasanta Pundarika explains how caregiving, behavioral health, women’s health, and capital incentives collide inside American healthcare.
Out of Patients EP452:You Shouldn’t Need AI to Survive Cancer: Brad Power
Cancer patients increasingly rely on AI and patient networks to navigate a healthcare system built around fragmentation and administrative burden. Brad Power explains why patients now trust technology more than the institutions designed to care for them
Out of Patients EP451: The Doctor Will Leave You Now: Jessica Peatross
Dr. Jessica Peatross spent years inside hospital medicine before realizing many chronically ill patients improved only after leaving the system behind. In this episode, she unpacks mold exposure, overmedication, functional medicine, and why patients keep losing trust in healthcare.
Out of Patients EP450: The Patient Wears Prada: Farla Efros
Retail executive and breast cancer survivor Farla Efros approached cancer the same way she rescued struggling companies: with strategy, discipline, and relentless preparation. She explains why patients are forced to become CEOs of their own care and why the system rewards those who can.
Out of Patients EP449: Coding the Invisible: Emily Mendenhall
Long COVID did not create a crisis. It exposed one. Patients without clear diagnoses lose access to care, coverage, and credibility. When medicine cannot measure your illness, the system moves on. Here is what that looks like and who pays the price
When Denial Becomes the System: Jace Yawnick
US healthcare does not fail when it denies care. It performs as designed. This essay involving the life of Jace Yawnick examines how insurance incentives, prior authorization, and employer based coverage shape access, delay treatment, and shift risk onto patients while increasing total cost.
Out of Patients EP445: Fatal to Relentless: Kathy Giusti
Patients now need executive level skills to survive diagnosis, treatment, and access. This essay featuring Kathy Giusti breaks down how healthcare incentives create that reality, who benefits, who pays, and what must change to reduce risk and restore accountability.
Out of Patients EP444: Discharge Instructions Not Included: Shlomit Liberty
At 19, Shlomit Liberty lost speech and got sent home with “stress.” Now she spends 15 to 20 hours a week guiding families through hospital chaos. This episode exposes how discharge, insurance rules, and system incentives leave patients confused and paying the price.
Conversion Therapy, Consumer Fraud, and the Cost of Institutional Authority
Conversion therapy persists under new names and softer language. Evidence rejects its claims, yet institutions continue to profit from hope and shame. This essay examines consumer fraud law, religious authority, and the healthcare system’s role in protecting vulnerable patients.
Out of Patients EP440:Not Today, Jesus: Janine Durso
A ruptured brain aneurysm triggered elite emergency care that saved a life. Insurance policy still blocks preventive screening for her child. This piece explains how US healthcare pays for catastrophe and delays detection, and what must change before the next bleed.
An ICU Doctor Checked His Insurance Portal Every Day While His Daughter Was Dying Of Cancer. He Was Terrified They Would Kick Her Off.
Dr. Hesham Hassaballa is board certified four times over with 20 years in the ICU. When his daughter was getting chemo, he checked his insurance portal daily, terrified they would drop her. A physician. In the system. Earning a good living. Still terrified of financial ruin because his child got sick.
Out of Patients EP439: Mental Health, Wicked Problems and Dodgeball: Rebecca Benghiat, JD
I went on Humanity Rx to say the quiet part clearly and attach names, timelines, and consequences to it.
Matthew Zachary joins Humanity Rx to break down how modern cancer care improves survival while leaving patients exposed to medical debt, prior authorization delays, and financial risk, and why policy change depends on organized patient power.
Out of Patients EP437: First in (Wo)Man: Jessica J. Federer
Women were excluded from U.S. clinical trials until 1993. That decision shaped drug safety, outcomes, and cost for decades. This essay breaks down the incentives, capital flows, and regulatory gaps that sustained it and what must change next.
Out of Patients EP436: “But You Look Great” with Monique Gore Massy
Monique Gore Massy spent 2.5 years misdiagnosed while lupus shut her body down. This episode exposes bias, diagnostic delay, and the cost of dismissing patients who “look fine,” and what happens when lived experience demands real authority.
Out of Patients EP0434: Neuro Spicy on the Front Line: Dr Pamela Buchanan
ER physician Dr Pamela Buchanan spent 20 years inside American medicine and 2020 nearly broke her. She worked 80 to 100 hour COVID weeks, isolated from family, and faced emotional flatline head on. A raw look at burnout, suicide risk, and why doctors are walking away.
Out of Patients EP433: STEMM Cells and Broken Bones
Dr Eugene Manley survived 20 to 30 ER visits a year in 1980s Detroit, earned 3 science degrees, and later caught falsified records after surgery at Mount Sinai Queens. In EP433 he breaks down medical racism, STEMM access, and how patients fight back with facts.
Out of Patients EP432: Callus on Your Soul: Jenny Opalinski
Jenny Opalinski worked ICU floors where 10 to 15 traumatic events can hit in a single shift. In EP432 of Out of Patients she confronts clinician burnout, moral injury, and the cost of empathy in healthcare. A raw conversation about survival inside a system that grinds people down.