For 50 years, US policymakers and economists have searched for ways to slow the growth of spending on health care. One approach currently taken by 35 states is to restrict the supply of health care by requiringnew and growing providers to show that they serve an economic need. Hospitals and...

Is there an obesity externality? A quasi-random natural experiment shows no evidence for the claim that the obese pass their health costs on to others through employer-based health insurance. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, many state governments began requiring health insurance plans...

Is the difficulty of purchasing health insurance as an individual or small business a major barrier to entrepreneurship in the United States? I answer this question by taking advantage of the natural experiment provided by the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage mandate, which allowed...

The nation is on a mission to “flatten the curve.” The goal is not so much to reduce the total number of COVID-19 infections — though that would be ideal — but to reduce the number of infections at any one time, so as to ensure that the nation’s healthcare resources are not...