What a phenomenal lineup of papers on health care competition

Who do Americans spend time with? This changes a lot over the course of their lives. 🧵

“a 1% increase in the tax rate reduces suburb-to-city commuting by 6.39%” and, the authors estimate, “[r]eplacing the wage tax with a non-distortionary land value tax would bring 26,000 jobs from the suburbs into Philadelphia. Such gains triple when we allow for productivity agglomeration forces.”

This article has been retracted at the authors’ request, with this explanation: We were unaware of Journal policies on image manipulation and had altered our submission by using an AI tool to move the ruler to the top of the image. We therefore wish to retract our image and case report.

Why did political scientist Robert Putnam, of "Bowling Alone" fame, choose to attend Swarthmore College? A book in the Toledo public library said it had the highest rate of students becoming top academics.

Yes. I’m sure the experts here didn’t do this. Probably because it’s nuts from a social science perspective?

More details on the firing of the National Science Board. The NSF now has no director, deputy director, or board. They have issued almost no new awards in 2026. The plan appears to be to completely destroyed the agency. The details are horrifying and have Russ Vought written all over them.

I try not to mess with R^2. Feeling more validated about that decision today.

The Thaddeus Stevens appreciators around this site might like to know there’s a new museum opening in the building that was his old law office in Lancaster, PA, this weekend.

🚨🚨🚨 Tl; dr: Enrollment in Medicaid expansion is associated with dramatic long-term improvements in credit score and reductions in medical debt sent to collections! Published today in @jamanetworkopen.com (full paper is linked below) Read on for more details 1/n www.uofmhealth.org/health-lab/m...

Updating my laptop BIOS like

Breaking news: Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Trump.

Looked at the new guidelines on statins for primary prevention. Lower bound for treatment was set to the risk level where the number needed to treat (prevent 1 stroke/MI)= number needed to harm (cause 1 diabetes). My takeaway: we need more/better decision science modeling in clinical medicine.

Oy vey. What a mess. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...

'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...

Every time Matt Damon takes on a period role he ends up looking like a third baseman for the Phillies.

AI not liking my meeting style

This is the closest thing economists have to consensus statements or economic policy guidelines.

American science is shrinking. 
A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://wapo.st/3OgoHKV

Culture and Health handbook chapter - honered to provide a lecture to iHEA - youtu.be/5CLi_XCd2fM slides available here healthinequalitylab.org/research/wor...

Treatment First shows no lasting health gains, while Housing First also reduces costs by lowering long inpatient stays. drive.google.com/file/d/1C0gv... 5/21

In her JMP, she uses a national sample of nearly 300,000 unhoused, mentally ill veterans to show that Housing First cuts 3-year mortality by 4.6 percentage points compared with no program. 4/21

Sydney Costantini is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on public, labor, and political economics. 3/21

We had a last minute cancellation: does anyone with policy experience working in federal administrative agencies want to come talk to my HKS admin law seminar tomorrow (Friday 4/17) at 1pm ET about the role of policy experts in federal agencies? Happy to do remote - DM me if interested!

AJHE is now online! Our social media editor, Anna Chorniy, will be posting summaries of our accepted papers.

For me the concept of non-inferiority will never not be witchcraft, and I almost always find myself revisiting this visualization in the linked FDA Guidance to figure out what's going on. www.fda.gov/regulatory-i...

A win for the Yinzers.

Some good journalism news. The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which runs The Baltimore Banner and financed by hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr. is buying the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and will run it as a nonprofit. #media #culture #newspapers #publishing

Hey, #EconSky! The administration is trying to cut NSF's Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. Click below to contact your representatives and urge them to save it. Tell your friends. Our research matters and is worth funding! www.congressweb.com/COSSA/58?fra...

Remarkable story of misdiagnosis. Former college/university president resigned because she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Seven years later, she has no signs/symptoms of the disease. www.cpr.org/2026/03/04/a...

Recently accepted by #QJE: “The Effects of Gender Integration on Men: Evidence from the U.S. Military,” by Greenberg, Wasserman, and Weber: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Today, guest lecturer Sean McElligott presented our students with this chart breaking down branded and generic pharmaceutical spending. Check out that last panel. Should patients be spending most of their copays on generic drugs when generics are such a small % of drug costs?

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel. King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

"AHRQ hasn’t funded any new research projects in almost a year, and it hasn’t issued grant funding for existing projects since before the end of the previous fiscal year in September."

Not the main point here, but I do not ever recall a federal agency making significant programmatic and personnel changes as a result of the PRESIDENT'S BUDGET PROPOSAL, which does not change any law or funding allocations. Congress hasn't acted yet. What are we doing here?

While teaching instrumental variables tonight (the 2nd night of Passover), I somehow found myself describing compliers, defiers, always-takers and never-takers as the four children from the haggadah (the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one, and the one who doesn't know how to ask).

tl;dr: NIH is running at about 60% of pre-Trump levels and NSF is running at about 20% of pre-Trump levels of funding-outlays (some directorates far below even that). Utterly catastrophic. An unforced disaster for U.S. society, and the world

I’m proud, and also sad, to be quoted in Science News about how the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (aka AHRQ) has been effectively disbanded, with no research funding being disbursed, while Congress continues to fund its (my!) work It hurts me, but more, it hurts patients

‘“It just disappeared,” Dr @noraverlaine.bsky.social says, with the $153,000 installment due in September 2025 never arriving with no notice from AHRQ.’ www.science.org/content/arti...

👀

It’s a pleasure to be speaking on health care affordability at today’s Penn in DC event with @michaelannica.bsky.social With the weather in the 70s and the cherry blossoms out, I almost don’t mind missing Phillies opening day.

Every once in a while, my med school classmates are the topic of some really interesting newspaper headlines nypost.com/2026/03/21/u...

My new favorite example of downward sloping demand curves.

Can we defeat the spirochete?

Hill-Burton Act hospital grants reduced out-of-hospital births and infant mortality, especially among non-white populations, but only when funds went to public hospitals, from Owen Thompson, Jason Fletcher, and Karin Wu www.nber.org/papers/w34976

This is the kind of economic illiteracy that has public thinking that energy production ➡️ energy independence. No one cares who you buy from when the price of the tradable good is set by global supply and demand. This article is a perfect exercise in miseducation. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Hi all, I’m hiring a post doc for next year! Heavy focus on building and designing AI for economic mobility in various domains. Please share widely if you don’t mind! utaustin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UTstaf...

we are losing so much talent, progress, and hope for no good reason www.vox.com/future-perfe...

A corporate board meeting long ago: Boss: "We need a name for our tax-advantaged HSA investment business, which is especially useful for people with high incomes, low health care needs, and low liquidity constraints." Branding visionary: "HealthEquity"

Smoking cessation happens during pregnancy but doesn’t persist as long as we’d like. @jamiedaw.bsky.social presenting her work at Penn, showing why primary data collection is needed to fill in knowledge holes.