The State of the Patient with Terry Wilcox

Episode

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  The Long Goodbye: A Personal Story 11.08.2026 33mnt

  They call Alzheimer's the long goodbye. But a goodbye is something you get to say.This episode is different. It's personal.Terry's stepmother Sandy spent forty years at the Colorado Hospital Association, where she was Director of Education and Member Services. She started forgetting things at fifty-eight. Her responsibilities were taken away one at a time until there was nothing left to take. She wasn't ready to retire. Nobody tested her — in that era, there was no test to give.Sandy died last week.Today there is a test. The FDA has cleared blood-based diagnostics that detect the biological markers of Alzheimer's — a blood draw, in the same tube they fill at your annual physical. Medicare does not cover them as screening. Commercial insurance is under no requirement to cover them at all. Which leaves out the people with the most to gain: working-age adults in their fifties and early sixties, still inside the window where detection changes what's possible.In this episode: what this disease actually takes, and in what order. The twelve million Americans providing unpaid dementia care. What COVID did to people who could not be told why their families stopped coming. Why treatment eligibility is governed by stage, not age. And two bipartisan bills — with 228 members of Congress behind one of them — that are still sitting in committee.There is a person behind every patient. With this disease, that isn't a slogan. It's the whole fight.
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  The Patch in the Pipeline 28.07.2026 18mnt

  The most common cancer in the world doesn't show up on a scan. It shows up in your bathroom mirror.Basal cell carcinoma gets waved off as "just skin cancer" — five million new cases a year, and a system so backed up that millions wait months for the standard surgery. In this episode, Terry follows one cancer through four very different lives: Kay Frazer, a retired dentist from Texas who spotted her own cancer before her dermatologist did. Mark Smith is from Tennessee, where he spent four decades working in telecommunications, a lot of it outdoors.Julie Breneiser, Director of Pharmaceutical Relations at the Gorlin Syndrome Alliance, who has had roughly a thousand basal cell carcinomas — and watched her community lose a treatment that was working. Dr. Raza Bokhari of Medicus Pharma, whose investigational SkinJect patch — not yet FDA-approved — could change how this cancer is treated, starting with the patients who need it most.It's a story about a red dot, a knife, a failed trial, and a LinkedIn message that changed everything. Because every patient has a number nobody warned them about — and Julie's is a thousand.Wear your sunscreen. Check your mirror. And follow State of the Patient wherever you listen.
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  The Person Behind the Patient 14.07.2026 29mnt

  Four advocates, four conditions, four corners of the country — and one system built to wear patients down. Meet the people behind the patient.Every patient is a person first — somebody with a job, a family, a garden, a beagle they walk in the morning. Then something happens, and suddenly they're navigating prior authorizations, step therapy, and specialty pharmacy phone trees.In the debut episode of the State of the Patient Podcast, host Terry Wilcox sits down with four advocates who refused to be worn down:Greg Josephs (New Jersey) has lived with myasthenia gravis for 20+ years and uses humor to meet a body that doesn't always cooperate — "I meant to do that."Michele Rayes (Texas), a pharmacy tech and cancer survivor, discovered an algorithm — not a human — had denied her appeals three times. She turned her story into a state law banning AI-only insurance denials.Vickie Wilkerson (Louisiana) was handed a $9,740 specialty pharmacy bill for a single shipment her insurance had already approved — and pushed back.Michelle Castile (Wisconsin) turned a government program that harmed her family into "Lessons Through Laundry," a keynote she delivers to social workers while folding laundry live on stage.Different stories, same three truths: the system is exhausting by design, there's a real person behind every patient, and nobody does it alone. If you're at the beginning of something hard, this one's for you.Learn more and get involved at PatientsRising.org.
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  Introducing State of the Patient with Terry Wilcox 09.07.2026

  Every patient has a number nobody warned them about — a denial letter, a copay, a bill that shouldn't exist. State of the Patient starts there. Host Terry Wilcox, co-founder of Patients Rising, talks to the patients fighting the system and the doctors, researchers, biotech founders, and policymakers who can actually change it.Free markets innovate. Safety nets catch people. Both have to coexist for healthcare to work.New episodes every other Tuesday. Follow now so they land right in your feed.New episodes every other Tuesday. Follow now so they land right in your feed.