If you’ve watched any television lately, or if you’re a social media wonk, you probably have seen the variety of health supplement products being advertised. There are supplements for everything that ails you.

Worried about your brain and developing early dementia? There’s a supplement for that. Worried about your liver? (Who worries about their liver?) There’s a supplement to cure that. Want to have better looking skin? There’s a supplement for that. How about slowing down the aging process? (Everybody wants that!) There’s a supplement for that. Worried about your blood pressure? Of course, there’s a supplement for that. In fact, I dare say there’s a supplement that promises to make you feel better, look better, think better, have more energy and strength, and live longer!

I’ve told my wife that if you take every supplement that is advertised on the market, you’ll probably live forever.

Just joking, naturally; but now I believe there are people who believe that! According to a Wall Street Journal article, written by Sara Ashley O’Brien, some people are actually spending $1000 per month on supplements. That’s right, one thousand dollars per month!

Here’s an example of what she means:

Kristin Leite, 38, spends about an hour organizing her “stack” for the week.

“In the morning, I take four powders and about five capsules,” said Leite, an esthetician who lives in Tampa, Fla. She pops around five more in the afternoon, and at night she swallows six or seven capsules. “I’m talking probably like over 20 different supplements throughout the day,” she said, making adjustments based on how she feels.

That’s on top of the injections Leite gives herself regularly: NAD+, which she says makes her feel energized and alleviates her brain fog, and glutathione, which is marketed for antioxidant and immune support. “It’s very painful, and it stings and it’s horrible,” Leite said of the latter. The Food and Drug Administration has warned that both can cause health problems in injectable form.

This girl has a following on Tik Tok of more than 615,000 followers, as well as links to ShopMy and Amazon, where she earns affiliate revenue from sales. So, she has a financial incentive for this foolishness. But she’s not alone.

Over-the-top supplement regimens have become bragging rights for the health-conscious and wellness-obsessed. From beauty lovers to masculinity influencers, everyone is boasting about their “stacks”—the numerous capsules, powders and injections they take regularly in the hopes of achieving a cumulative, self-optimizing effect. They’re spending over $1,000 a month in some cases on products that purport to improve their sleep, mental health, fertility, appearance and longevity, but often aren’t approved for those purposes. Some are making money from their endorsements.

Supplements went from a means of treating diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies in the 1900s to lifestyle products that are now the backbone of a $70 billion industry. Because they do not undergo approval by the FDA, they aren’t reviewed for safety or efficacy before coming to market. Some have lots of scientific research backing their use, while others have very limited support. Manufacturers are prohibited from making claims about treating or preventing disease, but influencers have sold the idea that buying the right products can fend off or cure almost any ailment.

Don’t buy the hype. Despite claims by these sellers that their products are “doctor recommended,” there’s little evidence of that in the commercials. In fact, I have quizzed my doctors on several of these products and all of them tell me there is no clinical evidence to support their claims. There’s an old saying that applies here: “Let the buyer beware.”

Millions of Americans are going uninsured this year since ObamaCare premiums went up since Biden era subsidies expired. This was the contentious issue that led to Democrats shutting down the government for 42 days last Fall. The Biden Administration temporarily increased the government subsidies during the Covid pandemic but they expired at the end of 2025.

Anna Wilde Mathews, writing for The Wall Street Journal, says nearly one in 10 people with Affordable Care Act healthcare plans (ObamaCare) last year dropped health insurance altogether, after premium costs rose sharply according to a new survey.

Most of those who remained in ACA plans reported larger out-of-pocket healthcare expenses in the form of higher copays, coinsurance or deductibles, according to the survey from health-research nonprofit KFF. About one-sixth of those who still have ACA coverage, or 17%, weren’t sure they would be able to afford their new premium payments for the entire year, indicating more people might drop insurance as the year goes on.

The survey is the broadest look yet at the fallout from the end of enhanced ACA subsidies, which lapsed at the start of this year, increasing premium bills for millions of enrollees. The higher healthcare costs have forced many ACA policyholders to make hard choices as grocery and gas prices are also rising.

The survey was conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation, a California based company associated with Kaiser Permanente, the large managed healthcare organization. The survey found that the most common reason cited for dropping insurance was cost.

“Not only is there significant coverage loss, but there could be more to come,” said Cynthia Cox, a senior vice president at KFF. She said the survey results were “about on target” compared with what had been expected. Of those surveyed, 69% still have ACA policies this year. Beyond the 9% who said they are uninsured, 22% of respondents now have some other type of coverage, such as Medicare or employer-sponsored insurance.

If you’re not careful, you might conclude that the solution to this problem is increasing government subsidies. That’s certainly the Democrats priority. But throwing good money after bad is never a good solution. The solution is lowering the cost of the premiums by making substantial changes in the system that save money.

There are other problems with this survey. Take the example they give in the article. Kelly Rose, 59 years old, who lives near Orlando, Fla., became uninsured this year because she couldn’t pay the roughly $1,700 monthly bill to keep the ACA plan she had in 2025. “It’s more than my mortgage,” she said. The cost is a huge jump compared with 2025, when she got help from a subsidy, she said.

Though her job at a bank offers health insurance, she said she missed the enrollment window in the fall because she had planned to keep the ACA plan, not realizing how much it would cost. In other words, she had a chance to get employer-sponsored insurance and she passed on that expecting ObamaCare to be cheaper. When government healthcare undermines the private system, as it did in this case, everybody loses including the patient and the taxpayers.

I have written on the flaws in the ACA before (Missteps to Fixing Healthcare) and this article simply illustrates the problems. It doesn’t make the argument for increasing government subsidies.

The cost of Medicare is going up, especially for those seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. Why these plans in particular?

Christopher Weaver and Anna Wilde Mathews, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tell us that the average American senior’s Medicare premiums last year were about 10% higher, or more than $200 annually, because of alleged overpayments to private Medicare Advantage plans, congressional investigators found. Medicare Part B premiums that most seniors pay were partly pushed up by controversial health-insurer practices such as adding diagnoses to trigger higher payments, according to the Joint Economic Committee, a bipartisan group of lawmakers that advises Congress on financial matters.

Overpayments to Medicare Advantage insurers increased Part B premiums by $13.4 billion in 2025, the committee said, a cost mostly borne by seniors. Both those enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans and those in standard Medicare faced those additional costs.

This story was first reported by these same authors in 2024 and I posted a blog concerning this called Home Nursing Visits Bilking Medicare for Billions. They discovered that insurance companies were instructing their home nurses who visited Medicare Advantage patients to add diagnoses to the patient record whenever possible to increase payments from the federal government. Later, in early 2025, they also reported similar activity by doctors working for the UnitedHealth Group. They revealed that the insurer had prepared checklists for potential diagnoses even before the patients were examined, as if the doctors needed to be educated!

Why would they encourage adding diagnoses?

More diagnoses make for higher scores—and larger payments. A Wall Street Journal analysis found sickness scores increased when patients moved from traditional Medicare to Medicare Advantage, leading to billions of dollars in extra government payments to insurers.

This latest report from these investigative journalists shows that more diagnoses means more money for insurance companies and higher payments from Medicare and higher premiums from seniors.

Lawmakers and government investigators have been probing how insurers’ billing practices have contributed to Medicare Advantage costs. A congressional watchdog found Medicare Advantage costs the federal government more than traditional Medicare, partly because of insurers’ billing practices. The insurers are paid more to cover enrollees who have more health conditions, and they can boost their reimbursement by recording more diagnoses.

The average Medicare beneficiary paid $212 extra in 2025 due to Medicare Advantage “overpayments,” the committee said. Medicare recipients with higher incomes pay higher premiums, and for those people, the committee said, the extra payments could be as high as $682 a year.

In an interview recently, Medicare agency administrator Mehmet Oz said of Medicare Advantage insurers, “I don’t think they’re as overpaid as has been reported.” Yet, he said, the Medicare Advantage payment system had at times created the wrong incentives and “we should change the rules.”