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

Zachary, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1394381336 ISBN 13: 9781394381333

Publisher: Wiley, 2026

Synopsis

"A fiery yet hopeful portrait of a broken system." - Publisher's Weekly

 

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

In America, it’s hard enough to stay healthy, but it’s doubly brutal when your care and your outcome hinge on one question: “What insurance do you have?”

Thirty years after surviving a rare brain tumor and earning, what People magazine coined, “the people’s voice in healthcare,” Stupid Cancer founder Matthew Zachary learned how to bypass America’s convoluted healthcare system: Don’t fix the system. Rig it in your favor. We the Patients: Understanding, Surviving, and Navigating America’s Healthcare Nightmare shows you how to make the most of a convoluted system that’s built to confuse and exhaust the very people it claims to serve. This patient proclamation shows you how to stay truly alive even in the face of illness, make meaning from chaos, and channel anger into advocacy.  It covers:

• Zachary’s crash course in the American healthcare system after a life-threatening diagnosis at 21 and his mission to make it “suck less” for the next patient
• The rise of patient advocacy and the growing movement to reclaim power from a system built to serve itself
• The coming Fifth Healthcare Revolution, driven by a newly organized electorate, and what it means for every American

We the Patients is an unfiltered look at what happens when the healthcare system fails real people. It’s a blueprint for fighting back, and a must-read for anyone navigating illness, caregiving, or just trying to stay human in a system that makes that harder and harder for us all.

About this title

About the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

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

“Where Thomas Paine’s Common Sense helped ignite the American Revolution, Matthew Zachary gives voice to a new Patient Revolution. We The Patients is essential reading for anyone wronged by American healthcare, exposing how the system works against patients and showing how real power can be reclaimed.”
―JEREMY ABBATE, Publisher, Scientific American

“A clarion call for how we can all work together to rig the system in order to better serve the needs of patients, not corporate interests.”
―WENDELL POTTER, Healthcare Whistleblower, Publisher and Executive Editor of HEALTH CARE un-Covered

“We The Patients restores humanity to healthcare. Matthew blends critique with hope and reminds us what’s at stake when we stop listening to patients.”
―HENRY S FRIEDMAN, MD, Deputy Director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center

“We The Patients shows why medical progress means nothing without patient accountability. Required reading for anyone shaping cancer care.”
―KAREN E. KNUDSEN, MBA PhD, CEO, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Former CEO, American Cancer Society

“We The Patients brilliantly explains how American healthcare got here while giving hope to millions who have felt unseen navigating it. I could not put this book down.”
―JODY HOYOS, CEO, Prevent Cancer Foundation

“Matthew lays the groundwork for the coming healthcare revolution, led by cancer survivors and the people who love and care for them, to change the system that failed them.”
―LISA C. RICHARDSON, MD, MPH, Former Division Director, Cancer Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

From the Inside Flap

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

In America, it’s hard enough to stay healthy, but it’s doubly brutal when your care and your outcome hinge on one question: “What insurance do you have?”

Thirty years after surviving a rare brain tumor and earning, what People magazine coined, “the people’s voice in healthcare,” Stupid Cancer founder Matthew Zachary learned how to bypass America’s convoluted healthcare system: Don’t fix the system. Rig it in your favor. We the Patients: Understanding, Surviving, and Navigating America’s Healthcare Nightmare shows you how to make the most of a convoluted system that’s built to confuse and exhaust the very people it claims to serve. This patient proclamation reveals how to stay truly alive even in the face of illness, make meaning from chaos, and channel anger into advocacy.

We the Patients is an unfiltered look at what happens when the healthcare system fails real people. It’s a blueprint for fighting back, and a must-read for anyone navigating illness, caregiving, or just trying to stay human in a system that makes it harder and harder for us all.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1394381336
• ISBN 13: 9781394381333
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Singer Jen