Out of Patients
with Matthew Zachary
Welcome to 2026: The Year of the Patient where the sick shall inherit the ballot.
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
Twenty Four Thousand People Follow Me on LinkedIn. Healthcare Should Be Paying Attention.
Crossing 24,000 LinkedIn followers is more than a social media milestone. It reflects a growing community of patients, caregivers, and clinicians who are tired of insurance denials, medical debt, and a healthcare system that too often puts bureaucracy before people.
Insurance Denied? Here’s What They Hope You Never Learn.
Most people assume an insurance denial is the end of the story. It isn’t. Learn why appeals succeed more often than you think, why so few patients file them, and discover a free, plain-English guide to navigating denials, deadlines, and your rights before you give up.
They Gave Every Medical Student My Book. Then We Talked About the Storm They’re Inheriting.
At the 2026 Robert A. Winn Clinical Investigator Symposium, hundreds of medical students received We the Patients and were challenged to see healthcare from the patient side of the bed rail, including the burden, bureaucracy, and hidden labor that medical training too often ignores.
86% Of Congress Took Money From The Health Insurance Lobby. Now There’s A Tracker With The Receipts.
A new tracker shows that 86% of Congress took campaign money from major health insurance PACs. The biggest checks went to the lawmakers with the most power over healthcare policy, raising a brutal question: who exactly is Congress working for when patients are being denied care?
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.
What My Annual ASCO Mosaic Reveals About Cancer Care
Every year I leave ASCO with hundreds of selfies that become one giant mosaic. This year’s image tells a bigger story than the science alone. It captures the people, conversations, and growing realization that the next challenge in cancer care isn’t discovery. It’s making sure patients can reach it.
The Deadliest Part of American Healthcare Might Be the Waiting
A retired firefighter’s denied cancer treatment reveals a larger truth about American healthcare. Administrative friction has become an economic strategy that shifts costs onto patients and physicians while delaying care in ways the system rarely measures but patients always feel.
The Fact That Patients Need Survival Guides Is the Scandal
Americans now need books to survive healthcare. That’s not evidence of empowerment. It’s evidence of failure. As affordability collapses and complexity grows, patients are being forced to become advocates, navigators, and administrators just to access care they already pay for.
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
52 Years Old and Still Here
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.
The Healthcare System Works Exactly as Designed. Cancer Patients Pay the Price.
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.
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.
MZLIVE and the Accidental Creation of America’s Survivorship Movement
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
Today My Book Comes Out! It's Already In Its Second Printing. That Never Happens.
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.
How I’d Spend $1 Billion to Fix Healthcare Alongside Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban attacks healthcare through pricing transparency and market discipline. I would attack it through patient infrastructure, legal protection, accountability, and civic power. Together, those strategies could finally begin realigning the incentives driving American healthcare.
When Patients Stop Trusting Dermatology
Millions of eczema patients increasingly distrust the treatments medicine tells them to rely on. Matthew Zachary examines topical steroid withdrawal, chronic inflammation, patient distrust, and the healthcare incentives driving one of medicine’s fastest growing credibility crises
Hospitals and Insurers Keep Blaming Each Other While Patients Finance the Entire System
Hospitals blame insurers. Insurers blame hospitals. Patients finance the entire system through premiums, deductibles, debt, and confusion. Matthew Zachary examines the incentive structures, financial flows, and institutional dependencies that keep American healthcare expensive, opaque, and exhausting.
The National Health Council Is Hosting A Conference On AI And Patient Advocacy. There Are Zero Patients On The Panel.
A conference on patient advocacy with zero patients on the panel says everything. The industry keeps explaining itself while excluding the people who live the consequences. Here is what that looks like and why it keeps happening.
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.