This is frightening and is going to kill people. The CDC estimates that so far this season (which is not over) there have been 280,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths from flu. Looks like the FDA wants that number to increase next year.

In case you needed another reason to love Bad Bunny more. Education + art = power.

UNCONSCIONABLE. I am beyond angry that this is what my tax dollars are going towards.

New paper alert! We looked at all #ACA plans nationwide, evaluating (1) choice set and (2) affordability. Sobering results: the avg ACA consumer has 121 plan options to consider -- far too many to be able to make a good decision. (1/n)

1) Health Savings Accounts #HSA are a solution to the wrong problem -- they don't address #ACA #premium costs and only deal with point-of-care costs. 2) we find HSA-based plans are terrible for people w/ various chronic illness. Which is >50% of the American pop. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Putting in some #ASHEcon abstracts for 2026 -- topics are: health insurance selection and consumer decision making; insurance affordability; ACA insurance; costs of care. Please ping me if you have papers in those topics and would like to submit a session with me!

Sobering work out today. Compared to 18 OECD countries, kids are ~80% more likely to die in the U.S. -- mostly due to prematurity or SIDS (infants) and gun violence/car crashes (kids). >31% of U.S. kids have a chronic illness. All of this likely to get worse due to recent funding cuts.

“The PSTF’s members, Kavanaugh wrote, must be appointed by the HHS secretary, who can also fire them whenever he pleases. And… Kavanaugh wrote that the HHS secretary can also directly supervise and overrule the PSTF’s decisions about which treatments must be fully covered by insurance.” 😳

Please read this and share widely, esp w/ your elected representatives. “Targeted projects… were seeking cures for future pandemics, examining the causes of dementia and trying to prevent HIV transmission. The mass cancellation of grants in response to political policy shifts has no precedent.”

Every flashbang could instead be a meal for a poor kid. Every hotel room for a National Guardsman deployed to fire at our neighbors could house a homeless vet. Every "less-than-lethal" bullet pulled from a journalist's eye could be already needed healthcare for anyone else. All of this is a choice.

Well, well, well.

Medicaid work requirements are a bad solution to a non-problem. & as part of the not-beautiful bill, if ppl get kicked off Medicaid for work requirement issues, they aren’t eligible for ACA subsidies, making that insurance out of reach. Cue chronic disease going unmanaged, hospitals w/ bad debt

22 years ago I pivoted from working on antibiotic resistance to pandemic viruses. Since then, I've argued that if we care about saving US lives in expectation, advance capacity for producing bird flu vaccine offers by far the greatest expected return on investment. ... We were so goddamn close.

Habeus Corpus.

This public comment period on COVID vaccine availability ends tonight at 11:59pm ET. Please make your voice heard! www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

Remembering the days when we had a president who could speak so knowledgeably on health care policy that he published a sole author paper in JAMA, with 68 citations.

New paper alert! Are you in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP)? Chances are you or someone you know are. We studied whether ppl with chronic illness can get the care they need in these plans. Read on for more! 1/n

One of the best parts about this career is that your colleagues become your good friends.

Special session announced at #ARM25 "Special Session: Insurer and Provider Consolidation in U.S. Healthcare" with @rgidwani.bsky.social, Amir Dan Rubin, Cheryl Damberg, and Cory Capps. Register here for a discount: buff.ly/VC0PIYT

NSF just slashed its graduate research fellowships by 51%. This prestigious program has trained & nurtured at least 42 scientists who went on to become Nobel laureates. We're destroying it, at exactly the time we claim to worry about our "sputnik moment" with China bsky.app/profile/davi...

AHRQ is gutted. It is worthwhile to download anything important – codebooks, data, SAS code, tech specs – asap. "Its latest budget... amounts to about 0.04% of HHS spending. If you’re going to spend $5 trillion a year on health care, it would be nice to know what the best use of that money is"

Hi folks, in these crazy times, some good news -- the Univ. of CO School of Medicine is hiring for an Assistant Professor in the Div. Geriatrics. Looking for: a health economist with interest in aging . You'd work closely with the incredible @lhnicholas.bsky.social Apply here by Apr 15!

For all the CMS data homies, finally, some action on VRDC. CMS has reviewed public comment and is asking for more, specific feedback from researchers. Please take some time to respond to the questions posed here. It looks like CMS really is considering the feedback we all provided the last round.

New research shows 7% of U.S. adults have been exposed to a mass shooting event. 12% of those adults had exposure to a mass shooting at a K-12 school. This suggests that the proportion of U.S. kids exposed to a mass shooting even is much higher.

For everyone truly concerned about waste/fraud/abuse, a reminder that the Dept of Defense is the largest source of spending for the fed gov't, far outpacing Medicaid, SNAP, SS, etc. The DoD has failed 7 audits in a row. That means it has never passed an audit. thehill.com/policy/defen...

AFTER news broke of the 1st child in America dying from measles, RFK Jr's FDA cancelled the meeting to decide on next season's flu vaccines. Cue more people dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Despite the importance of primary care in early detection and creating a usual source of care, even the most generous estimates peg primary care spending at only 10% of overall health care spending. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Just received a professional cold email that started with “I hope you have eaten well this weekend” and I would like you all to know that this is how I will be opening all of my emails to you forthwith.

I don’t think we have to worry about climate change so much anymore. The infectious diseases will kill us before. Also news outlets like @npr, you are failing in reporting on this properly. Less man-swallowed-by-a-whale, more the health infrastructure of the country is being decimated.

Volunteering in your child’s Kindergarten classroom on Valentine’s Day is peak living 🥰

For all of the backlash around DEI programs, the WSJ reports they didn't really move the needle over a four year period dedicated to DEI. People in corporate senior roles are still more likely to be white, and most likely to be white men. www.wsj.com/business/dei...

🚨 In light of recent federal shifts, AcademyHealth is rolling out updates to support our community with expert guidance on issues like NIH grant cuts and executive orders. Stay informed with us. academyhealth.org/blog/2025-02...

The thing this administration failed to realize is that when you threaten the scientists and professors, that's one thing, but when you threaten university administration, you are dealing with a much more litigious enemy with well-honed lobbying skills.

Remember Newt Gingrich's oped from 2015? www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/o...

The Senate HELP Committee has jurisdiction over NIH. GOP members of the committee represent AK, AL, IN, FL, KS, KY, LA, ME, MO, OH, and SC. Research universities and hospitals in those states need to be extra loud.

CDC PRAMS data, which looks at maternal mortality and morbidity data, is offline. This after Georgia disbanded its maternal mortality and morbidity review committee, Idaho took its down and revamped it, and Texas decided to skip reviewing maternal deaths for 2022 and 2023.

Worth reading -- a perspective from a USAID worker who is now laid off. Her project was originally funded by the George W. Bush administration. www.youcanknowthings.com/w/

Digital book burning is right.

A panel on the Treasury this Thursday, with the incredible @epopppp.bsky.social and @abenewman.bsky.social. This is not just for academics. Everyone needs to understand what's happening right now. Spread the word!

Reading this put a balm on my frazzled brain.

Giving access to SSNs, other data on government employees to non-employees like Musk is a violation of 5 USC 552a, and carries with it a penalty of $1000 per person whose data was accessed. We are building a case. Govt employees who want to participate should contact me directly

WIRED has been doing vital work. If you’re looking to support good journalism right now, subscriptions are cheap.

In a week of a disappointing lack of leadership from Democrats, universities, and most specialty societies, Aaron Carroll and Academy Health have been the opposite -- communicative, insightful, and showing us they are involved in the fight. Dr. Carroll's latest in NYT. THIS is how you message.

🚨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...

Reuters, only major news outlet doing its job right now in reporting on Elon’s hostile takeover. This is in its front page. NYT, LA Times, Wash Post all currently national embarrassments and may need to relinquish their journalism cards. www.reuters.com/world/us/mus...

This is terrifying and needs to be shared widely. Elon Musk is not a government employee or an elected official.