Brain cancer at 21 forced Matthew Zachary into the American healthcare system decades before he understood its economics, incentives, and failures. At 52, he reflects on how surviving long enough to see the whole machine clearly led to writing We the Patients.

Cancer patients increasingly absorb the financial risk of surviving disease in America. A brain cancer survivor examines how healthcare incentives, insurance design, and policy decisions shifted instability onto patients and families while institutions protect margins.

Thirty years after brain cancer, Matthew Zachary returned to the piano at Merkin Hall for MZLIVE, a night that became far more than a concert. Survivors, advocates, clinicians, and healthcare leaders confronted what survivorship actually costs and what the system still refuses to see

We the Patients officially launches today and is already in its second printing before release day. Matthew Zachary shares why readers across healthcare, advocacy, and survivorship circles are responding so strongly to a book that names the realities patients live through every day.

In January 1996, I lay in a hospital bed with a brain tumor, no piano, and no idea if I would survive. A simple melody came to me. When I got home, my left hand had forgotten how to play. So I wrote Simplicity with just my right hand. 30 years later, I'm performing it live for the first time.

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.

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.

After 30 years of cancer survivorship, Matthew Zachary explains why he partnered with Codex Labs. This post explores radiation side effects, steroid driven treatment cycles, skincare regulation gaps, and why barrier focused science matters for compromised skin.

After 22 years away from solo performance, Matthew Zachary returns to the stage April 28 at Merkin Concert Hall in NYC. A live piano concert marking 30 years since brain cancer, featuring stories from the cancer community and the launch of We the Patients.

Matthew Zachary reads from We the Patients for the first time at the Cervivor Summit. Surrounded by cervical cancer survivors, he breaks down while honoring families crushed by medical debt and systemic failure. A defining moment ahead of the book’s May 2026 release.

National healthcare leaders put their names on We The Patients because they recognize what patients have endured for decades. From Scientific American to former Medicaid and CDC officials, these endorsements validate a movement to reclaim power from a system that failed the people it was built to serve.

A blinking answering machine. That's how I found out I had brain cancer. I was 21. Thirty years later, I wrote a book about it. "We the Patients" isn't a memoir—it's a manual. The system isn't broken. It was built this way. Don't try to fix it. Rig it in your favor. This book shows you how.

I was 21. Brain cancer came via a blinking answering machine. There was barely an internet. No young adult programs. We kind of all just died back then. But I didn't. I've watched three decades of impossible become ordinary—and it's been the greatest terrible privilege. 2026 is the Year of the Patient.