If your policy idea sounds nice in the abstract but doesn't take into account implementation challenges, second-order effects, or the possibility of unintended consequences, then it's actually a bad idea. Even more so if it violates individual rights.

I.e., should it be legal? Yeah. But is it kinda sad and pathetic? Yes.

Raise your hand if you actually *shop* for your health insurance. I mean really shop: i.e., collect info from multiple insurers, compare plans, compare prices, and pick the one that's best for you. Things could be so much better.

DPC on @NBCNews tonight. How does it go again, "First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then..."?

Excellent example of an idea that is instrumentally good but at the same time normatively flawed. Totally agree with Tanner that this likely does some good in the sense of price transparency, consumer incentives, and so on. But to be a stickler, it does so by overriding

Apparently you can buy gift cards for online sports betting. Sigh.

Everyone talks about "access" in healthcare. Almost no one defines what access means operationally. That is why health policy debates go nowhere.

Who here is familiar with Thomas Campbell's (1777-1844) poem, The River of Life? It's one of my favorites. Reply and tag your favorite life extension influencer. THE more we live, more brief appear Our life’s succeeding stages; A day to childhood seems a year, And years

Proposal: let's officially reassign "nonplussed" to mean unimpressed or unmoved, which is how people already use it. To convey "mentally stopped cold", let's use "endstopped" or "check-mated." p.s. I know the etymology; I looked it up. Clearly I'm not an originalist on this one.

Name an issue/question in health policy where it's either not clear (or at least not obvious) what the proper, rights-respecting position is. I.e., where you could hold a good debate and ask both sides to make the best case they can on the grounds of reason, rights, markets.

Three things, in addition to saving lives, that you want to see from an OPC are: 1) while conceding the short-term reality of the users, it holds actual treatment and recovery as the long-term goal and helps steer people toward that, 2) its presence does not increase crime in the

I'm not going to dig into this right now, but having read the abstract, one thing I'd want in a study like this is some capture of length of time at that residence. (Most people retire to that situation after having lived many years someplace else.) Hopefully that's in there

A turn-the-tables hypothetical, but... if a health insurance company operating in a genuinely free market put together a product featuring guaranteed issue and community rating, could it even sell it as "insurance"? The combination of those things are so anathema to the concept

Additional ideas welcome!

I'm happy to share that I've been awarded a small teaching grant to experiment with incorporating GenAI in my health policy debate course for MPH students. I definitely don't want them using it to write their speeches for them, but it could be a helpful tool in preparing for

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A video on coalitions that I made for one of the health policy courses I teach. Includes the famous "Bootleggers & Baptists" example. https://t.co/Z4zejmCHEz

In the 12/12/2025 CMH newsletter, I explained why the Center for Modern Health is named the way it is. You can read that here in our newsletter archive, where you can also subscribe so you don't miss out in the future:

I want to hear a school marching band or pep band play Joe Satriani's song Friends. Preserving that snare beat would be essential. That's it. That's the tweet.

Subsidies are band-aid solutions. If you have to tack on a subsidy to get the result you want out of your program (in this case the ACA), the program isn't really a success.

There's an 80-year-old guy in the hockey group I play with. Recently he had a heart attack. He was back on the ice in two weeks. Someday maybe that will be common.