Austin Frakt

A nice, short post by Robert Dittmar makes a great point in a few charts. Here’s his chart, using Bureau of Economic Analysis data, of the total U.S. federal deficit, by year and cumulatively (aka, federal debt): Yow! Here’s what that chart looks like without health care’s contribution: Cumulative deficit (debt, the green line) would […]

The Huffington Post poll tracking chart that Kevin Drum posted looked like a cave to me. Somewhere in there is the elusive swing voter. I just had to do this: (No low information voters were harmed in the creation of this graphic.) [Cross-posted at The Incidental Economist]

Peter Bach, Leonard Saltz, and Robert Wittes write in an NYT op-ed, At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, we recently made a decision that should have been a no-brainer: we are not going to give a phenomenally expensive new cancer drug to our patients. The reasons are simple: The drug, Zaltrap, has proved to be no […]

We all need 8 hours of sleep per night for good health, right?. And the more sleep we get, the better health we’ll enjoy, yes? It turns out the evidence doesn’t support either claim. The optimal sleep length may be closer to 7 hours than 8, and it may be worse to sleep more than […]

Sarah Kliff helpfully interprets Mitt Romney’s Meet the Press statements about health reform as meaning he is in favor of preventing individuals with pre-existing conditions from being turned down from a plan if they have continuous coverage. That is, if you remain enrolled in some insurance plan, you can switch from plan-to-plan without any barriers […]

By Roxanne Palmer. [Cross-posted at The Incidental Economist]

One of the points I made as a discussant at the American Society of Health Economists conference this year is that the factors driving health care utilization and spending among Medicare beneficiaries are likely different from those for the non-elderly. Yet few analysts of health care trends comment on or exploit those differences. (For one […]

Jon Oberlander’s latest in New England Journal of Medicine is a handy guide to the history of U.S. health reform. It includes a nice timeline in chart form. (All ungated.) Here are a few bits I highlighted as I read: “If we had a parliamentary system, the United States probably would have adopted universal insurance […]

I’m seeing people make what appear to me to be mistakes or false assumptions in two areas. It is, however, possible I’ve missed something important, so maybe someone can tell me if I have. Issue 1: Under Mitt Romney’s vision for Medicare, what happens if Medicare spending growth hits the (GDP+0.5%) growth cap? As best […]

I was already aware of four challenges to the economy and policy facing us on or about January 1, 2013: On January 1, 2013, the 2-year extension of the Bush tax cuts is scheduled to expire. If it does, income tax rates will increase for nearly all taxpayers. On the same day, the current patch […]