Out of Patients
with Matthew Zachary
Welcome to 2026: The Year of the Patient where the sick shall inherit the ballot.
Charles Dickens Would Have Loved American Healthcare
Modern medicine can do things Charles Dickens could barely imagine. American healthcare then wraps those miracles in bureaucracy he would recognize immediately. Tiny Tim, Oliver Twist, Scrooge, and Bleak House enter the patient portal.
America’s Newest Healthcare Industry Is Protecting Us From American Healthcare
American healthcare has spawned a multibillion-dollar navigation industry to help patients use the care they already pay for. Advocates solve real problems. The stranger question is why the system creates so much demand for them.
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.
The First Patient Poll That Actually Belongs to You, The Patient
Every major source of patient data in this country is compromised by whoever paid for it. The We The Patients National Patient Perspectives Poll changes that. 5 minutes. Anonymous. The data belongs to patients, not institutions.
The Most Important Story at ASCO 2026 Wasn’t the Science
ASCO 2026 delivered extraordinary advances in cancer research, including a standing ovation for a pancreatic cancer breakthrough. Yet the dominant conversation centered on something else: the widening gap between scientific innovation and patients’ ability to access it.
Out of Patients?
Join the recurring Out of Patients dispatch from Matthew Zachary covering the latest American healthcare shenanigans. Essays, podcast episodes, media appearances, book updates, and live events delivered with a sardonic Gen X perspective from a patient who simply refuses to shut up.
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