Don Taylor

I don’t write to defend domestic violence, drug abuse, denigration of women, or the many other ways in which professional football players misbehave. I don’t write to defend what I consider to be the unjust withholding of money from college players. And I don’t write to defend lack of transparency and not paying for the […]

I have a new paper with Duke and NIH colleagues out this week (early online) in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (full pdf:JCO-2014-Taylor) that demonstrates gaps between the stated preferences of Medicare beneficiaries with cancer and their caregivers about what Medicare should cover, and what the benefit package actually covers. The gaps we highlight show beneficiaries and caregivers allocating finite resources […]

A federal judge ruled against the NCAA in the so-called Ed O’Bannon case, opening the way for players to share in licensing revenue (the use of their image and likeness on TV, etc) above the cost of attending college (what can be covered by a scholarship). The most consequential points: In a 99-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Claudia […]

Avik Roy released a health reform proposal yesterday, published by the Manhattan Institute (full pdf). I am not going to go all post-modern literary critic on this (only deconstruct), in part because a lot of it lines up nicely with things I have been writing about/calling for over the past few years, in search of a political deal that […]

The CBO Budget Outlook (2014-24) is out today, and much of the focus is on their revised estimate of the ACA’s impact on the labor market (Appendix C, pp. 118-27). CBO is projecting that “the ACA will cause a reduction of roughly 1 percent in aggregate labor compensation over the 2017-2024 period, compared with what […]

Brad Flansbaum sent me a link to a private score of PCARE, the reform plan released on Monday by Republican Sens. Burr, Coburn, and Hatch. I don’t know the Center for Health and the Economy, though I do know several members of their advisory board and many of you will as well. I don’t have […]

I was a discussant of Casey Mulligan’s paper Average Marginal Labor Income Tax Rates Under the ACA at the UNC Tax Symposium hosted in Chapel Hill, NC by Doug Shackelford this past Saturday. His figure 3 summarizes changes in the marginal tax rate of labor income over the past 7 years, accounting for both explicit […]

I was watching Anthony Bourdain “Parts Unknown-Sicily” the other night, and was amazed at how similar the scene where they slaughtered the pig and then prepared the meat was to the time-honored Eastern North Carolina tradition of “hog killin” on New Year’s Day. I am not planning to slaughter any hogs in the back yard […]

Peder Zane laments that Obamacare has turned his family into takers in the health insurance realm. My post shows the subsidy different groups now get for health insurance, with the key table below. I work for Duke and Duke pays ~$12,000/year in premiums for my insurance, and I pay $5,100/year. The ACA essentially mandates employer […]