You wouldn’t think of calling an arsonist to put out a fire. But that’s essentially what Democrats are telling the public. They set fire on the American healthcare system with their unilateral change of the system to ObamaCare (ACA) in 2010 without a single Republican vote, yet now they want the American people to believe they’re the best ones to fix the problem. They made promises of a cheaper system that would not separate you from your doctor, but now they’re unrepentant when all those promises were broken.

Republicans have been trying to fix the problem ever since, but every time they try their efforts are thwarted by Democrats, and even some of their own. This is healthcare madness!

The problem is Democrats believe in socialized medicine – complete government control of all healthcare – and ObamaCare is their best ticket to achieve that goal. They don’t care that costs are skyrocketing due to the intrinsic problems of ObamaCare. That only gives them more excuses to ramp up government subsidies. They did that under the Biden administration using the Covid pandemic as an excuse for “temporarily increased subsidies.”

But nothing in Washington is ever “temporary.” Now they want these subsidies to become permanent, or at least extended another three years without any changes to the system. That’s what they demanded in the government shutdown that lasted 42 days and that’s still what they are demanding. They’re trying to convince the American people they’re looking out for them, when they’re really just looking out for their socialized medicine agenda and whatever political advantage they can achieve making Republicans look uncompassionate.

Natalie Andrews, writing for The Wall Street Journal, says, “Republicans suffered through a recurring nightmare this week: their inability to replace or at least unwind the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare program.”

For the past decade, President Trump and the party have raged against the 2010 law, only to see legislative attempts to decouple it from the American economy fail. This week was no different, as a Republican proposal to replace ACA subsidies with sending federal funds directly to some households for out-of-pocket healthcare costs failed to advance in the Republican-controlled Senate. Although Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate, it takes 60 votes to advance legislation.

The focus on health-insurance premiums has moved the political discussion onto one of the few topics on which Democrats have an advantage. Americans’ approval of the ACA edged up to a new high of 57% in December, according to a Gallup poll. An NBC poll in October found that Democrats hold a 23-point advantage among registered voters over Republicans on the party best equipped to deal with healthcare. In other words, these people want the arsonists to put out the fire!

This simply shows the ignorance of the average voter. This was clearly demonstrated in New York City recently when they elected a socialist mayor who made them promises he’ll never be able to keep. Democrats in Congress are doing the same thing with healthcare. They are relying on the ignorance of the electorate when it comes to the evils of socialism, especially as it concerns socialized medicine.

In every socialized medicine system in the world, the people get free healthcare (albeit with greatly increased taxes) which inevitably leads to reduced access to healthcare (long waiting times), rationed healthcare (when it costs too much) and denied healthcare when the government determines the elderly and the disabled don’t merit the expense. The American people don’t want this, but they’ll get exactly that if they give Democrats the political power they want.

Doctors can be killjoys! First it was the bacon double cheeseburger you love and they told you it would lead to a heart attack. Then it was the low-fat diet that was sure to protect you from a heart attack – until it wasn’t! Then they told you eggs were bad for you – and now they say they’re good for you! What’s next?

What’s next is melatonin. If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, and who hasn’t, you’ve probably taken melatonin to help you sleep. Veronique Greenwood, writing for Time, tells us between 1999 and 2018 the number of adults taking melatonin has more than quintupled. Available over the counter, melatonin is marketed as a natural sleep aid. However, because it’s classified as a supplement, not a medicine, it is not evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

What do the sleep experts say?

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine does not recommend melatonin for insomnia according to Marie-Pierre St. Onge, director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research at Columbia University.

The effects of taking the hormone daily for long periods of time are not well-understood. In November, preliminary, unpublished results reported at the American Heart Association meeting found a connection in adults between taking melatonin for more than a year and heart failure. Although that study may be less informative about melatonin than about the link between heart disease and insomnia, it highlights the fact that there is relatively little known about using melatonin the way an increasing number of people are.

What melatonin does

In the evening, your body begins to produce melatonin, which is made primarily by the pineal gland. Melatonin levels peak in the early morning and taper down after sunrise. The hormone is thought to provide the body with a sense of how long the night is, to help synchronize biological processes with the sun.

Once it’s floating around, however, melatonin affects more than sleep. Some decades ago, scientists were surprised to find that it tunes the immune system, increasing and decreasing different forms of inflammation. A lack of melatonin leads to increased fat accumulating in the livers of mice. There is evidence that tissues other than the pineal gland, including bone marrow, make their own melatonin, and the list of cell types with receptors allowing them to sense melatonin turns out to be immense. The hormone also appears to help direct the death of cells, so scientists are curious what role it might have in aging more generally.

Careful studies of melatonin and its metabolites in people’s blood and urine have revealed that there are a number of disorders where its levels are disrupted, including depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Some people with Alzheimer’s disease may have very little daily cycling of melatonin, perhaps contributing to the sleep difficulties that are a feature of the neurodegenerative disorder.

Taking melatonin under a doctor’s advice can be helpful for people in these situations. Studies have shown, too, that blind people whose natural melatonin cycles get out of whack, leaving them with a form of constant jet lag, can benefit from supplementation. Children with autism can sometimes benefit from being prescribed melatonin, says Owens. It’s also been explored as a potential therapy after heart attacks, says Dr. Tom Scammell, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

There is a big gap between how researchers and doctors think about melatonin and how many people are using it. To try to trace connections between long-term melatonin use and other health conditions, some researchers have turned to electronic health records.

On November 3, an abstract from an American Heart Association meeting described an unpublished study using this type of data. It included some startling numbers: Over the course of five years, adults who were prescribed melatonin and took it for a year or more had a 90% greater risk of heart attack than people of a similar health status who didn’t take melatonin.

However, it’s not necessarily the case that melatonin caused the heart failure documented in this study. In fact, points out Scammell, insomnia and heart disease often travel together, with 50% of people with heart failure having insomnia compared to 15% in the general population. So, people who have insomnia and are given melatonin by their doctors in an attempt to cope may already be on the way to developing more serious heart problems. “It is possible that the poor sleep that triggered use of melatonin was an early sign of heart problems,” Scammell says.

Is occasional use of melatonin dangerous? Not likely, but it makes sense to study the issue further. If you are having trouble sleeping, a better choice, St-Onge and Owens agree, is to try changing behavior around bedtime. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-1 is the gold-standard treatment for sleeplessness in both children and adults. Studies show that this modification–which involves a number of stages designed to set you up for better sleep–has a longer lasting, better effect than any sleeping pill.

ObamaCare is a train wreck. I wrote a book entitled The ObamaCare Train Wreck in 2014, before the new healthcare law went into effect, and it has certainly lived up to my expectations. It’s now nearly twelve years later and Democrats keep trying to put this train back on the track by increasing government subsidies to offset the rising costs. But throwing good money after bad never made sense and it certainly doesn’t now.

The Biden administration increased ObamaCare subsidies and increased eligibility limits during the Covid pandemic as a response to the rising costs. They flow to more than 20 million people. Without those subsidies, many enrollees will see their monthly payments jump and could decide to drop coverage altogether.

But those temporary measures are due to expire the end of December. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that extending the enhanced ACA subsidies permanently would cost $350 billion over the next 10 years. Democrats want to make those increased subsidies permanent and that’s one reason they shut down the government for 42 days. But now that the shutdown is over, this issue is still on the table until the end of the year.

The White House is responding with new proposals to address the issue. Natalie Andrews, Lindsay Wise, and Olivia Beavers write in The Wall Street Journal that the subject is under discussion, but President Trump has yet to weigh in on his opinion.

Proposals being considered include a two-year extension of the ACA subsidies as an enticement to get Democrats to get on board. As part of the new plan, the White House has discussed imposing income caps for Affordable Care Act enrollees to qualify for the enhanced subsidies, as well as measures to crack down on healthcare fraud, some of the people said. Republicans also have discussed moving the subsidy money into newly created health savings accounts and barring taxpayer funds from going toward plans that cover abortion and transgender care, the people said.

Health Savings Accounts (HSA) allow taxpayers to use money deposited into accounts by employers that can be used for healthcare expenses. HSA accounts are tax free and give families control over their healthcare expenditures. These accounts were first created by John C. Goodman, healthcare economist, in 2003 but they were phased out by the Biden administration. Re-establishing these accounts is a great idea.

Republicans are coalescing around taking the money spent to extend Obamacare subsidies and putting it in a health savings account, a proposal Trump supports. “Rather than giving money to insurance companies, we want to start giving the money to patients,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R., Kan.), who has discussed plans with the White House and senators.

Marshall said that Republicans also want to eliminate fraud in Obamacare, by eliminating “zero-premium” subsidies now offered under some plans. Republicans say such subsidies lead to people being signed up for plans that they don’t know about—while insurance companies receive taxpayer funds.

Should a bipartisan measure fail, Republicans are considering pushing their healthcare plan without Democrats by using a budget process called reconciliation. The approach requires a simple majority vote in the Senate, where 60 votes are usually required. GOP lawmakers used reconciliation earlier this year to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, but the process takes months.

A vote on extending the healthcare subsidies is expected by mid-December—part of a deal struck between Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and a group of centrist Democrats to end the shutdown earlier this month. It is unclear if the House will take up the measure.

Republicans need to put forward their own plan to improve healthcare insurance. It is clear now more than ever that ObamaCare is not the long term solution.