We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare

"A blistering exposé... a fiery yet hopeful portrait of a broken system." — Publisher's Weekly

"Whereas many people have put their finger on the problem with our healthcare system, Matthew Zachary puts his fist down the problem's throat." — Greg Simon, Executive Director of the White House Cancer Moonshot under Vice President Biden

Take control of your healthcare — and understand the rights that protect you.

In America, it's hard enough to stay healthy. It's doubly brutal when your care and your outcome hinge on one question: "What insurance do you have?"

Diagnosed with brain cancer at 21, and thirty years later known as what People magazine called "the people's voice in healthcare," Stupid Cancer founder Matthew Zachary learned how to work America's convoluted healthcare system: don't fix it, rig it in your favor. We the Patients is a proclamation for patient activism — part survival manual, part call to arms — showing you how to navigate a system built to confuse and exhaust the people it claims to serve.

It covers:

• Why American healthcare isn't broken — it's designed this way, and understanding the design is the first step toward fighting back
• The awareness trap — why disease awareness campaigns aren't enough, and what consumer protections and targeted activism can do instead
• Patients as consumers — the surprising solution to sixty years of denials, delays, and damage
• Patients as an untapped civic bloc — the case for turning 19 million cancer survivors, and the millions more who love and care for them, into organized political power

We the Patients is an unfiltered look at what happens when the healthcare system fails real people, and a blueprint for fighting back. Required reading for anyone navigating illness, caregiving, working in healthcare, or simply trying to stay human in a system that makes that harder every year.

Praise for We the Patients:

"We The Patients belongs to every person fatigued, frustrated, and forsaken by the maze that passes for our healthcare system." — Lisa Fitzpatrick, MD, MPH, MPA, Former Medicaid Chief Medical Officer, Medicaid

"Where Thomas Paine's Common Sense helped ignite the American Revolution, Matthew Zachary gives voice to a new Patient Revolution." — Jeremy Abbate, Publisher, Scientific American

"We The Patients restores humanity to healthcare." — Wendell Potter, Healthcare Whistleblower, Executive Editor of HEALTH CARE un-Covered

"Required reading for anyone shaping cancer care." — Karen E. Knudsen, MBA PhD, CEO, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy; Former CEO, American Cancer Society

MATTHEW ZACHARY has spent three decades fighting to make the American healthcare system less cruel, organizing millions through advocacy and media. A former concert pianist whose life was turned upside down by brain cancer at just 21, he founded ­Stupid Cancer, the largest nonprofit for young adults with cancer. He also launched The Stupid Cancer Show, widely regarded as the first healthcare podcast, which later evolved into the award-­winning Out of Patients. He produced Cancer Mavericks, a documentary series about the rebel patients who changed modern oncology. He is CEO and Co-Founder of We The Patients, a national movement organizing patients into ­collective civic power.

JEN SINGER is a bestselling ghostwriter and editor, and the author of The Just Diagnosed Guides. She has survived cancer, a complete heart block, and the American healthcare system.