Austin Frakt

The Advisory Board is tracking which states claim to be opting in or out of the Medicaid expansion, or leaning one way or the other. Here’s their map: Using the same color coding, here’s my chart, based on statehealthfacts.org data, of the uninsurance rate by state for the Medicaid expansion target population, adults with incomes […]

Maybe you’ve heard that Obamacare is the biggest tax increase in history. Not so. Not even close. Kevin Drum posted the evidence in a table. I turned it into a chart. More here and here. By the way, the evidence also suggests that Obamacare is neither unconstitional nor likely to be job killing. It’s not […]

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, by Stephen Puleo, is a fascinating account of, well, you can tell from the subtitle, can’t you? It could have used another pass by an editor, but is otherwise an enjoyable and interesting read. This was no small accident, resulting in the longest trial and the […]

On Tuesday, in Florida, Mitt Romney said, Well right now, most people get their insurance through their employer and the reason they do that is because their employer gets a tax deduction when they buy insurance for you. But if you’re a very small-business person—let’s say a one-person business—you don’t get a tax deduction for […]

This one is via Brad Flansbaum. [Cross-posted at The Incidental Economist]

A new, ungated New England Journal of Medicine paper by Kate Baicker and Amitabh Chandra has the correct interpretation of health care job growth. It is tempting to think that rising health care employment is a boon, but if the same outcomes can be achieved with lower employment and fewer resources, that leaves extra money […]

As Ezra Klein noted, The Bipartisan Policy Center included this infographic in their report on obesity and its economic consequences (PDF). Do you buy the numbers in this infographic? I don’t see any reason why we should. First of all, the report tells us that the source for the graphic is “Derived from information from […]

By Jen Sorensen and via Kevin Outterson. [Cross-posted at The Incidental Economist]

I just finished, and enjoyed, Tyler Cowen’s An Economist Gets Lunch. It’s chock full of fun guidance for anyone with an adventurous spirit seeking better food. Below are my highlights, which I made on my Kindle version as I read it. All are direct quotes, and they’re representative of the book’s style, though certainly not […]

Given the overall condition of the human race during most of the history of the civilized world, you would think that simply not having bubonic plague would be enough to put most of us in cheerful moods — but, no, we want a hot tub too. That’s from The First National Bank of Dad, by […]