Decreasing the cost of purchasing coverage and reducing administrative burdens should lead to a substantial increase in zero claim enrollees balloon-juice.com/2025/08/18/z... #HealthPolicy #ACA

😆

The latest Pitt HPM newsletter did a nice profile of the work that my colleague @colemandrake.bsky.social and I do on administrative burdens in health insurance, and why this is such an important area of health policy to understand. (No bias whatsoever.) heyzine.com/flip-book/77...

On the folly of relying too heavily (and overly narrowly) on OHIE — well-tread ground if you were on health policy Twitter in 2013 Glad @citizencohn.bsky.social posted this response letter when WSJ would not www.thebulwark.com/p/one-big-de...

Hard to overstate how useful this resource is. A few more fiddly Marketplace policies didn't make it into the Senate bill (e.g., SEP verification requirements) — probably because of Byrd concerns — but most consequential policies (including ending automatic re-enrollment with subsidies) remain

It’s possible to just help people.

New paper out with Andrew Anderson, @laurasamuel.bsky.social, and Kali Thomas in @jamahealthforum.bsky.social on "Medicare Advantage Part B Premium Givebacks and Enrollment" jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... @bsph-hpm.bsky.social @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social More below.

Another day, another reviewer at a major medical journal rejecting my difference-in-difference study because of time-invariant differences between treated and control groups

New RESEARCH with @colemandrake.bsky.social @dludwinski.com Sarah Avina and Dylan Nagy in @jama.com #HealthForum Examining #ZeroPremium plan turnover leads to less re-enrollment and more active choices to plan switch jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

The editorial boards of seven leading health econ journals are taking a stand today against political influence and ideological attacks on peer review and academia. No matter what you study we want to see your scholarship and will NEVER collaborate with suppression. Please repost.

turns out the GOP budget bill adds so much to deficits that it will automatically trigger cuts to Medicare (not just Medicaid). Older voters unlikely to be happy about this when word gets out democrats-budget.house.gov/news/press-r...

Latest House bill text includes another blow to the ACA, ending “silver loading.” That would increase premiums by $350 for a hypothetical family. Here’s why: www.brookings.edu/articles/und...

Republicans have given up on repealing “Obamacare,” but apparently they are still interested in significantly cutting it. Buried in reconciliation, provisions producing at least a 1/3 reduction in marketplace enrollment:

Also if they weren't "pausing" a regulation that makes it easier for elderly and disabled people to dually enroll in Medicare and Medicaid. This policy is projected to result in 1.3 million fewer such people getting extra financial assistance from Medicaid to help pay for their meds and care.

If there is one thing to know this week, it’s this: The combined impact of proposed #Medicaid changes, reduced premium tax credits, and the establishing of new enrollment barriers would erode ACA coverage gains to the tune of 13.7 million more Americans being uninsured by 2034.

#Section1332 #Reinsurance #ACA waivers would become much more expensive for states in a no #Silverload scenario @colemandrake.bsky.social @egolberstein.bsky.social @dludwinski.com @adrianna.bsky.social @standorn.bsky.social @charlesgaba.com balloon-juice.com/2025/05/08/s...

New today @healthaffairs.bsky.social w/ @dmaanderson.bsky.social, Naomi Zewde, and Adam Biener on how states can implement #BasicHealthPlan to continue offering quality, affordable coverage to low income subsidized Marketplace enrollees. @commonwealthfund.org www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

Well these are the most appropriate and reasonable award winners in the history of award winners. Congrats! @johnmullahy.bsky.social @edwardnorton.bsky.social

The child mental health crisis has existed for decades, but the link between poor mental health and youth suicide is mediated by policy and can be broken, from Janet Currie https://www.nber.org/papers/w33632

Worth noting that research that found that ACA insurance expansions saved lives occurred in a context of a good/improving labor market. This triple whammy would likely have real consequences for Americans' health.

This is super compelling. Gonna try out this app. In a randomized trial, individuals with blocked internet access experience greater mental health. This replicates in a delayed treatment arm.

See this chart for one stark example: NIH funding has dramatically slowed down. Grant awards are down *$3 billion* so far, compared to same time period last year I asked the White House to explain. “This is not a researcher entitlement program,” said an official, defending their new approach.

🚨I share @AcademyHealth’s concerns about theHHS plans to merge ASPE with AHRQ. AHRQ is vital for saving costs, boosting patient safety, and aiding rural health. Ensure reforms have Congressional oversight to preserve AHRQ’s role and funding. Contact your reps! #SaveAHRQ ow.ly/kwAW50Vq3Tl

This story says AHRQ will be folded into ASPE, which is preposterous if you actually understand how different those two arms of HHS are. Unclear what this means for the future of extramural research funded by AHRQ, but I can’t imagine it’s anything good

📣 REMINDER: I've completed my district-by-district visual breakout of total enrollment in #Medicaid, #CHIP, #Medicare & #ACA healthcare coverage for all 435 House districts and all 50 states (+DC). PLEASE SHARE THESE GRAPHICS WIDELY. Find your district/state here: acasignups.net/program-enro...

🏥 AHRQ is the only federal agency dedicated to health services research. With bipartisan support from 194 leading organizations, let's urge Congress to demand any reforms are transparent and strategic. Contact your reps today! #HealthForAll ow.ly/aPUe50VjnQe

I’ve had the privilege of serving the country in 2 different government agencies ~10 years apart. At the FTC I was in charge of about 120 people as head of the Bureau of Economics. At the DOJ I worked closely with career staff from the Economic Analysis Group & other parts of the Antitrust Division.

1962 www.nber.org/books-and-ch...

We really need a Bacon decomp command that doesn't require xtreg and can handle unbalanced panels. I'm grateful to those who released the OG command, but the poor huddled masses of applied econometricians need an upgrade. ... or is there one out there?

Trump's second term so far has been one of erratic policy decisions pointing in the direction of slower growth and higher prices. @profcew.bsky.social and I examined recent economic data points, and we see worrying signs for American consumers and investors. www.americanprogress.org/article/trum...

New @commonwealthfund.org brief on ending ACA Marketplace subsidies. Substantial costs include: - State economies would shrink by $34 billion. - 286,000 jobs would be lost nationwide. - State and local tax revenues would decline by $2.1 billion. www.commonwealthfund.org/publications...

Reminder to please submit! Deadline is Feb 28. #econsky

Do you know of a public data source that should be preserved? Use this form to help Georgetown's Massive Data Institute in their goal of preserving public data to maintain its accessibility and integrity for research advancement, science replication, and historic documentation.

🚨HRSA's Area Health Resources Files webpage is now down. Fortunately, I built an archive of data 2000-2023 for a previous project, which can be accessed without restriction here: data.mendeley.com/datasets/dwf...

Monumental: Marketplace and Medicaid expansion populations now roughly the same in size.

Fukuyama: “The truth of the matter is that implementation is part of policymaking; if a policy can’t be properly implemented, it shouldn’t be rolled out in the first place since it will simply contribute to the narrative of ineffective and incompetent government.” open.substack.com/pub/persuasi...

🎉 BOOM: 2025 #ACA Open Enrollment hits nearly 24.2M enrollees, nearly 26.0M with BHPs included; up 12.7% y/y, still time to #GetCovered in a few states! acasignups.net/25/01/17/boo...

Don't get me wrong, I love passing ideas and research back and forth with @cynthiaccox.bsky.social, @dmaanderson.bsky.social, @colemandrake.bsky.social and the handful of other folks who are nerdily passionate about marketplaces, but it would be nice to have an institutional anchor for this work.

I'm not crying, you're crying. We truly don't deserve dogs.

Here's a survey from August 2024 I hadn't looked at closely before: only 12% of Americans — and fewer than one in four Republicans — report wanting to spend less on Medicaid than we do now. ssrs.com/health-care-...

Unpopular opinion: We could just watch basically any other sport that doesn't do this to players.

Looking forward to sitting by the fire and reading this

🚨🚨🚨 Come work with me! 🚨🚨🚨 Laura Attanansio and I are hiring for a 2-year postdoc position at @umassamherst.bsky.social, starting in summer '25. We have a few exciting projects focused on health care prices, care affordability, and perinatal care quality. careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u...

And despite cannabis legalization in 39 states

Boy does this ring true.

It's not just that asking ChatGPT or other AI became an option; it's that Google has gotten worse. Sure, you can't trust AI at face value, but ChatGPT now provides you with sources for where it's getting its information. This also is typically better than Google searches.

“Using the most conservative estimates or the mean estimates from this literature, we estimate that every $1,000 investment in paid parental leave would generate, respectively, $7,275 or $29,406 in present discounted net social benefits.”

tfw when you're trying to write a grant that will get your university $$$ but you keep being distracted by emails about a $10 receipt that you lost