America can’t call itself great if it forgets its caregivers
America loves to celebrate those who stand tall. Our founding ideals are built around independence, and we even set aside a holiday to honor it. We cheer for pioneers, entrepreneurs, and innovators who rise by their own strength.
But a nation’s greatness is not measured by how it treats those who can stand alone. It is revealed by how it treats those who cannot stand at all.
A nation that calls itself compassionate must prove it, not only in speeches and foreign aid but in how it treats the most vulnerable under its own roof.
Every day, millions of Americans live outside the myth of self-reliance. Some are children born with profound disabilities. Others are veterans carrying wounds long after the battle ends. They are aging parents fading into dementia and families exhausted by a loved one’s addiction or mental illness.
Alongside them are the people who care for them — unseen by most and too often alone.
Forgotten and invisible
Roughly 65 million family caregivers in this country provide more than $600 billion in unpaid care each year, nearly the annual budget of Medicare. They lift, bathe, feed, and speak for their loved ones, often sacrificing their own health and future in the process. More than half now perform complex medical procedures once handled only by professionals in hospitals. Yet too many feel invisible in the nation they help hold together.
Contrast that with the tens of billions we spend each year on health care for those who entered the country illegally. In California alone, the state spends more than $8.4 billion on care for undocumented patients, much of it routine care sought in overcrowded ERs. Meanwhile, family caregivers desperately work to keep vulnerable loved ones out of those same waiting rooms, where exposure can mean infection, pain, or worse.
If we can find billions for those who broke our laws, why do we struggle to support citizens who save our health care system hundreds of billions every year? What does that reveal about what, and whom, we truly value?
Actionable change
President Donald Trump has called family caregivers “heroes” and pledged to do more to support them. I know the president has a great deal on his plate. But so do 65 million Americans caring for chronically impaired loved ones, often with little help, no training, and few resources. Their plates are full every single day. And for most, they never get cleared.
We do not need a new bureaucracy or a 2,000-page bill to change course. Here are a few ideas the president could direct right now, and after four decades of doing this work, I have many more.
A refundable tax credit could acknowledge the value of unpaid care, for example.
Redirecting a portion of existing Medicaid dollars to follow patients home could strengthen families and reduce institutional costs. Those redirected funds would not vanish into untraceable programs; they can be monitored, audited, and measured with far greater transparency than the billions funneled into sanctuary cities, where accountability is often little more than a slogan.
Expanded respite care and flexible work policies could prevent burnout and keep caregivers in the workforce.
None of these ideas is radical. All cost far less than nursing-home care, which can often run in excess of $90,000 a year per person. Most importantly, they honor human dignity and strengthen the family, the bedrock of any stable society.
And if we are serious about making America healthy again, we must look beyond hospital beds and prescriptions. Health is not measured only by vital signs. It is also measured in how well we equip those caring for loved ones who will not get better. Many chronic conditions will not reverse. Many wounds will not heal. But how we support the people who shoulder that relentless work says as much about our nation’s health as any policy ever could.
Take care of our vulnerable
November is National Family Caregivers Month, a chance to look past speeches and slogans and ask ourselves whether our compassion is genuine or just convenient. The weakest among us strip away illusion and show us who we are. They test whether our values are convictions or just words. And those who care for them do the same.
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A nation that calls itself compassionate must prove it, not only in speeches and foreign aid but in how it treats the most vulnerable under its own roof. Scripture reminds us that we will be judged by how we care for “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). Caregivers live that command daily, bearing one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) and reflecting the heart of God in the most ordinary, extraordinary ways.
As I often remind fellow caregivers, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Our terms do not expire. Our loved ones do. But we must make sure we do not — not emotionally, not spiritually, not physically, and not fiscally. Strengthening those who bear this work strengthens families.
Strong families build stronger communities, and stronger communities sustain a strong nation. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”
Gay-spread monkeypox is back. Watchdog asks policymakers to drop the political correctness.
Health officials in California recently confirmed that monkeypox, a virus spread almost entirely in the West by and among homosexual men, has once again reared its ugly head in the United States.
The Oversight Project, a government watchdog group, is calling on policymakers poised to tackle the latest outbreaks to drop the political correctness that tripped up previous approaches to the disease.
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "Public officials should be honest about how and where monkeypox is spreading, should not be worried about offending anyone, and should pull the fire alarm if animals and children start catching it."
Monkeypox is a nasty disease caused by a virus in the same genus as the virus that causes smallpox. While endemic in various African regions, monkeypox made a global play in early 2022.
Individuals infected with monkeypox may experience a painful rash that can look like pimples or blisters, respiratory problems, exhaustion, fever, swollen lymph nodes, and chills. The disease can be spread via respiratory droplets, through "direct contact with a rash or sores of someone who has the virus," and through "contact with clothing, bedding, and other items used by a person" with the virus.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that of the 528 infections diagnosed between April 27 and June 24, 2022, 98% of those infected were homosexuals and that "transmission was suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95% of the persons with infection."
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Months after then-President Joe Biden stated in May 2022 that "everybody should be concerned" about the virus, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra declared that a "public health emergency exists nationwide." Numerous states including Illinois and New York subsequently rushed to declare statewide disaster emergencies.
'They should shut down gay bathhouses.'
While the Biden administration and various state health authorities appeared willing to admit that the spread was predominantly among homosexuals, they nevertheless generalized the threat, glossed over the nature and locations of the spread, and refrained from cracking down on super-spreader venues in the same fashion they had when tackling COVID-19 — while in some cases fretting both privately and publicly about feeding into homosexuals' "sexual shame and stigma."
Such efforts to gloss over critical facts and to pretend the virus presented a danger to the general population evidently caused consternation behind the scenes.
The Oversight Project flagged, for instance, a May 27, 2022, email in which Dr. Stephanie Cohen, then-medical director of the San Francisco City Clinic, noted to other officials at the San Francisco Department of Public of Health that while she supported the "desire to not stigmatize gay men/MSM and agree that other populations can be affected, I worry a bit that we are not being fully transparent about current [epidemic]."
The Oversight Project noted that "officials were primarily concerned with not stigmatizing, the exact opposite of the COVID response."
The watchdog group further revealed that while health officials around the country were well aware that the disease was being spread at LGBT events and homosexual venues such as bathhouses, they refrained from seeking health crackdowns on such locations.
The disease, which the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under Anthony Fauci was reportedly cleared to conduct gain-of-function experiments on, has apparently made a comeback.
Last week, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the City of Long Beach's health department both confirmed new cases of monkeypox in their respective jurisdictions.
The announcements by both health authorities appear to have once again been worded to avoid stigmatizing homosexuals. The Long Beach health authority noted, for instance, that "Mpox can spread through specific behaviors, regardless of a person’s race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation."
The Los Angeles County DPH, echoing the state health authority, did, however, note that the disease primarily impacts "communities of gay and bisexual men" and that risk can be mitigated by reducing the number of sexual partners, limiting attendance at "sex or circuit parties," and refraining from sharing "fetish gear" and sex toys.
"Monkeypox is back. We encourage policymakers to follow the science instead of political correctness this time," stated the Oversight Project.
When asked what prioritizing science over political correctness would look like in practice, Howell told Blaze News, "It means they should shut down gay bathhouses if they're again epicenters for monkeypox."
Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.
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Obamacare was never affordable — and neither is cowardice
Twelve years ago this week, the federal government shut down over a fight that should have mattered more than any budget squabble in modern history: Obamacare.
In 2013, House and Senate conservatives — led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — refused to fund Barack Obama’s budget unless the pending health care law was stripped of its most ruinous provisions. They warned it would crush Americans with skyrocketing premiums and limited choice.
Instead of begging Democrats for a short-term continuing resolution, Republicans should force the debate they’ve been avoiding.
They were right. And today, watching those predictions come true, the defeat still stings. Democrats always stay united on health care. Republicans, even now, act as if the issue doesn’t exist.
The lost fight
In that 2013 showdown, Republicans held the stronger hand. They controlled the House and could have passed a full funding bill minus Obamacare. The law was still unpopular, the website was collapsing, and millions were losing coverage.
Democrats had already lost more than 60 House seats and a generation of state-level power because of their support for the 2009 law. The “dependency” phase hadn’t yet taken hold, but the costs were already exploding — premiums jumped 47% in the first year alone.
Yet GOP leaders sabotaged their own side. After Cruz’s 21-hour Senate filibuster demanding a defund vote, the Republican establishment turned its fire inward.
John McCain scolded Cruz from the Senate floor for comparing the fight to World War II and calling it a “great disservice” to veterans. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed the strategy as “not a smart play.” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned against risking a shutdown “doomed to fail.”
Instead of hammering Democrats for creating unaffordable health care, the GOP obsessed over process. The pressure worked. On October 17, Republicans surrendered unconditionally — and Obamacare became untouchable.
At the time, I wrote:
If we are resigned to letting go of the Obamacare fight in the budget, there is no way it will ever be repealed, even partially repealed. By 2017 ... there will be over 30 million people either willingly or unwillingly dependent on Obamacare. Even if it’s barely workable, it will be the only care they have. We cannot repeal it.
That prediction also came true.
Failure by surrender
Twelve years later, after winning full control of government, Republicans still couldn’t repeal the law. Now, even with a new GOP trifecta, they’re struggling to stop Joe Biden’s insolvent expansion of it.
On paper, Democrats should have the weaker hand today. They control no chamber of Congress and are threatening a shutdown to preserve health care subsidies no one voted for.
Yet they’ve managed to frame the fight around the “cost of health care” — a problem created entirely by Obamacare itself. Republicans’ silence only amplifies the lie.
Democrats are betting that voters no longer remember why premiums exploded or why subsidies now cover nearly every enrollee. They’re counting on a GOP that can’t articulate the obvious: Obamacare made health care unaffordable and fueled the broader inflation strangling families.
Even the Washington Post recently admitted in an editorial that “the real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable.”
A second chance
Republicans now have the opportunity they squandered a decade ago. With control of the White House and Congress, they can finally make the case for repeal and for genuine, market-based reform.
They can remind Americans that we’re paying Cadillac prices for catastrophic coverage — massive deductibles, 33% denial rates, and bloated UnitedHealth plans protected by federal subsidy. They can expose the system for what it is: a monopoly masquerading as compassion.
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Instead of begging Democrats for a short-term continuing resolution, Republicans should force the debate they’ve been avoiding. Health care can’t be fixed by tinkering at the edges. It must be freed from Washington’s grip.
Twelve years ago, Republicans claimed they lacked the leverage to stop Obamacare. Today, Democrats have no leverage at all — and they’re the ones complaining about the costs of their own creation.
God doesn’t hand out many second chances, especially in politics. Republicans just got one. They’d better use it.
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