All told, nearly half of states have explored the topic in one way or another with about 66 different proposals across the country. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health News reports Oregon is the latest blue state to actively study a single payer health care proposal.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Monday Links – 5 October 2026
- House Democrats have a platform – it looks like $2 trillion or more of new spending.
- In Scandinavia: “We find significant migration responses among the wealthy: A 1 percentage point increase in the top wealth tax rate decreases the stock of wealthy taxpayers by about 2 percent.”
- Financial literacy.
- Expert opinions that turned out to be wrong.
- The greatest increase in wealth has been among the bottom fifth of the income distribution.
Is Artificial Intelligence a Public Health Threat?
There have been news reports claiming that AI models can become so focused on achieving a directive that the models cheat, hack into rival systems and even cover their tracks to conceal the unethical behavior. Purportedly at times AI models even rewrote their own computer code to circumvent guardrails designed to control them. Furthermore, AI models have actively tried to prevent their own disabling. Indeed, the New York Times reports that a researcher at Anthropic resigned, believing that AI could turn on their creators and literally annihilate all humans.
Saturday Links – 3 October 2026
- Is asymmetric information a good reason for government to regulate health care. (cannon)
- Cost of the Iran war: The average US household has paid roughly $1,380 in extra costs. That includes $1,026 in extra gasoline and diesel costs, $11 in nitrogen fertilizer costs, and $342 in federal war spending (AEI)
- Why are all the new jobs going to women?
- If pro-growth reform is good, why doesn’t everyone do it?
- Rescuing Social Security: a benefit-reduction package would reduce debt relative to GDP by more than twice as much as a tax-focused reform by 2060.