This is a blog (mostly) about the U.S. health care system and its organization, how it works, how it fails us, and what to do about it. All blog authors have professional expertise in an area relevant to the health care system. Main contributors Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll are researchers and professors in health economics and health services. By avocation and as bloggers we’re actively trying to understand our health care system and make it better. Our goal is to help you understand it too, and to empower you with research-validated information so you can be a more informed observer of or participant in the ongoing debate over how to reform our system.
Sometimes we stray from health care, just to keep things lively. Posts on politics, family life, food, information technology, and personal finance are among the occasional non-health topics. Whether on health care or not, the unifying theme is thoughtful consideration of important ideas. Blog authors write on topics of interest that they know well. Few if any posts at The Incidental Economist are idle speculation or shallow observations.
The blog’s title, “The Incidental Economist,” was Austin Frakt’s pseudonym when he blogged anonymously on The Finance Buff (March-June 2009). Austin is a professional economist, but this is not an essential fact, and he prefers to be judged not for his title but for his work (read more about Austin and his work on his About page). An economist yes, but only incidentally so. The name remains though the blog now has multiple authors.
In August 2010, The Incidental Economist merged with Rational Arguments, Aaron Carroll’s former blog (where his archives remain). If Austin is an incidental economist, Aaron is more so. He’s actually a physician. You can read more about Aaron on his About page.
Other, less frequent contributors to The Incidental Economist are described on the Other Contributors page.
