American pay more for healthcare than other developed countries. That’s not new to me, but the explanation for this does raise some eyebrows.

Andrew Mollica and Anna Wilde Mathews, writing for The Wall Street Journal, gives us a breakdown of the costs for healthcare in comparison to other peer nations. For instance, a total hip replacement in the U.S. is approximately $29,000 while in peer nations it is $10,000. Total knee replacement costs $26,000 compared to $11,000. Robotic prostatectomy is $24,000 versus $11,000, and spinal decompression is $21,000 compared to $7,000. Even having a baby by C-section costs $14,000 versus $4,000. These are just a few examples.

These authors say insuring a family for healthcare costs about $27,000 per year. The main cause: Prices are far higher in the U.S for the same medical products and services, from surgeries to drugs. Here is a breakdown of the reasons healthcare costs more in the U.S.

• Prescription drugs cost a lot more in the U.S.
  • Americans pay three to five times more than other nations
• Big hospitals can charge higher rates because of consolidation
  • Consolidation reduces competition which allows higher prices
• The U.S. spends far more than other countries on administration
  • We spend more on the delivery of care
• Labor costs are higher
  • We pay our healthcare providers more
• American are using more healthcare
  • Utilization is up due to rising age of the population

These are the issues raised by these authors. I have some observations of my own.

• The decline of private practice
  • More and more doctors are being employed by hospitals. That allows hospitals to charge more for the same services that these doctors perform in their offices since the billing goes through the hospital and insurance pays more to hospitals.
• Advances in technology
  • Americans pay more but they also have access to the best medicine in the world. The advances in technology and procedures costs more but the patients benefit from these improvements in treatment.
• The high cost of healthcare insurance
  • Healthcare insurance costs more than it should. You can thank the Affordable Care Act (a badly named legislation) for that. It requires all patients to have coverage of all basic procedures, regardless of need or gender, and therefore artificially raises the costs of insurance. This can be improved through new legislation but Democrats don’t want to admit ObamaCare is a failure.

It is true Americans pay more for healthcare but it doesn’t have to be that way. President Trump has made strides in reducing the cost of prescription drugs and more legislation is needed to bring down the cost of healthcare insurance. We will always pay more if we have access to the best medical practices in the world. We don’t want to go the way of socialized medicine, as some countries have done, just to lower the costs of healthcare.

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.