If you're buying plane tickets to ASHEcon '26, make sure you stay for our session (last of the conference) of 3 RDs studying heuristics, stigma, & guidelines. With @aschwartz.bsky.social, @vinisingh.bsky.social, @dzeltzer.bsky.social, and @mlbarnett.bsky.social! ashecon.confex.com/ashecon/2026...
02.03.2026 13:48 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW: I and colleagues reviewed 15,000 documents to illuminate how Jeffrey Epstein used VIP doctors to control and manipulate young women* — and how the doctors helped him, treating his needs as more important than the patients'. Gift link.
*see next post in thread
The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)
26.02.2026 23:23 — 👍 93 🔁 40 💬 1 📌 3
🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about...
🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples?
We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...
Interesting paper on effect of smart phone usage of traffic fatalities. They exploit major album release dates and a RDD design and find that traffic fatalities increase by 10 persons on the day of release of major albums. So, rock music IS dangerous! www.nber.org/papers/w34866
24.02.2026 12:35 — 👍 26 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 3wow
18.02.2026 18:53 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0🤔🤔🤔
11.02.2026 01:24 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Sure, WSJ. Shame on me for worrying about patient access to care and taxpayer spending over for profit companies. As long as the system works for the wealthy it must be fine with you. Enjoying the comments on the piece, though.
Trouble With MedPAC - WSJ share.google/M9VyVAt9V255...
what is with WSJ going in so hard for Medicare Advantage the past few days??
11.02.2026 00:58 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
meanwhile, at the MA State House, my colleagues and I made the case for why primary care physicians need to unionize
www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/10/b...
I'm at the power plant
I'm at the fish disco
I'm at the combination power plant fish disco
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Is Immigration Good for Health? The Effect of Immigration on Older Adult Mortality in the United States David C. Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, Brian E. McGarry #34791 Abstract: We measure the impact of increased immigration on mortality among elderly Americans, who rely on the immigrant-intensive health and long-term care sectors. Using a shift-share approach we find a strong impact of immigration on the size of the immigrant care workforce: admitting 1,000 new immigrants would lead to 142 new foreign healthcare workers, without evidence of crowd out of native health care workers. We also find striking effects on mortality: a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US would result in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide. We identify reduced use of nursing homes as a key mechanism driving this result
Immigrants save Americans' lives: "...a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US would result in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide. We identify reduced use of nursing homes as a key mechanism driving this result."
www.nber.org/papers/w34791
Major news outlets: Please consider prominently reporting what this all-star team of researchers has found.
www.nber.org/papers/w34791
the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex
05.02.2026 17:05 — 👍 19949 🔁 4689 💬 302 📌 263
Doctors nationwide are seeing patients avoid care amid ICE crackdowns, sometimes with dire consequences.
Health providers are now employing pandemic-era tactics to keep care accessible.
How immigration policy is changing American health care:
www.statnews.com/2026/02/03/i...
🧵 New version of our paper (@bcegerod.bsky.social) is finally online: "How Many is Enough? Sample Size in Staggered Difference-in-Differences Designs"
We show that even well-identified DiD studies are often underpowered; sample sizes needed are surprisingly large
Paper: osf.io/preprints/os... 1/6
Checks out
02.02.2026 23:18 — 👍 25 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0
BREAKING: ICE has halted "all movement" at a Texas detention facility due to measles infections, DHS confirms.
02.02.2026 01:21 — 👍 1261 🔁 580 💬 161 📌 297
I am so proud and excited for my friend Dr. Alister Martin @alisterfmartin.bsky.social, NYC’s next Commisioner of Health.
The city is in great hands!
In case it helps, you can use HTML code (e.g., <p> <b> <i> <u>) to format the text blocks on your biosketches in SciENcv
31.01.2026 18:07 — 👍 13 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year.
That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027.
A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications.
A short 🧵
📖 Our new study in @jamainternalmed.com examines the primary care workforce serving fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries using a pragmatic, patient-centered measure: clinicians available for new patient visits per beneficiary.
👉Article: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
(1/5)
this will haunt my nightmares tonight
20.01.2026 02:11 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Who's Afraid of the Minimum Wage? Measuring the Impacts on Independent Businesses Using Matched U.S. Tax Returns* Nirupama L Rao, Max Risch The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 141, Issue 1, February 2026, Pages 373-427, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaf053 Published: 10 December 2025 Article history V PDF • Split View 66 Cite P Permissions < Share V Abstract A common concern surrounding minimum wage policies is their impact on independent businesses, which are often feared to be less able to bear or pass on cost increases. We examine how these typically small and medium-size firms accommodate minimum wage increases along product and labor market margins using a matched owner-firm-worker panel data set drawn from the universe of U.S. tax records over a 10-year period, and using state minimum wage changes as identifying variation. We find that on average, firms in highly exposed industries do not substantially reduce employment-they do not lay off workers but moderately reduce part-time hiring. Instead, these firms are able to fully finance the new labor costs with new revenues, leaving average owner profits unchanged. Higher wage floors, however, forestall entry, particularly for less productive firms, reducing the number of independent firms operating in these industries by roughly 2%. Yet these industries do not shrink; instead, incumbent responses and strong positive selection among entrants reshape industries that rely heavily on low-wage workers, yielding fewer but more productive firms after the cost shock. We also take a worker-level perspective to examine how potentially vulnerable individuals are affected by minimum wage increases. Using panels of low-earning and young workers, we find that their average earnings rise substantially with the minimum wage, while they are no less likely to be employed. Worker transitions indicate that minimum wage increases boost retention and that worker reallocation from independent firms toward corporations buffers dis…
New QJE for the minimum wage literature uses IRS data to study effects on small and medium size businesses. The effects seem…very good
academic.oup.com/qje/article/...
One of the most honest answers in medicine remains: “We just don’t know.”
Especially true for the flu -- timing, transmission, vaccines, all still full of surprises.
Five questions, five reflections on why the flu keeps humbling us. #IDsky #Medsky blogs.nejm.org/hiv-id-obser...
In a new, timely project led by @nathanlo.bsky.social, we collected vaccine exemption rates (mostly) at the county-level for nearly all states.
Now up at @jama.com: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
SNF capacity is the bottleneck that keeps people waiting in ER hallways and make-shift hospital rooms. SNF beds are crucial to our health system. Since 2020, capacity is down 5%, with less slack, due to staffing shortages.
@jamainternalmed.com @mlbarnett.bsky.social: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
new paper from my team!!
13.01.2026 14:36 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I wonder who can do the quarterbacking! 🤔
22.12.2025 19:58 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
