Harold Pollack
University of Chicago Professor. Posts are my own. Reposts do not imply endorsements. Oh--Pay your credit card off in full every month. That's the best risk-free,-tax-free investment available on Planet Earth.
- Neil Young really should have won the Oscar for Philadelphia. I still tear up when I hear that song played.
- Query for followers familiar with Medicaid 1915(c) IDD waivers: If a social worker/other provider holds a counseling session to assist an older-adult caregiver with caregiver/guardianship transition issues, is this a reimbursable service?
- An irony of my life is my physical resemblance to subway vigilante Bernard Goetz. I was sometimes confused for him in late-1980s NY. Pondering the new book about the case, I'm reminded once again: Hurt people hurt people.
- State-year-level Data Distress Call over the period 2000-2022: Do any followers have data for (a) naloxone access law; (b) the presence of PDMP; (c) HCV prevalence? A bird photography mug is on offer here....
- My commentary in JAMA Network Open: The continuing partisan divide in the opioid epidemic. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
- On the Cumulative Power of Human Ingenuity open.substack.com/pub/arthurgo...
- At Goldhammer brings it.... arthurgoldhammer356783.substack.com/p/donalds-de...
- Mitt romney, making sense || www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/o...
- Reposted by Harold PollackThomas Statchen @haroldpollack.bsky.social Amanda Abraham, Christina Andrews, and Colleen Grogan examine Section 1115 waivers concerning substance use disorder. They examine the timeline of waiver reform and assess how well the SUD waivers are working. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...
- Today I cancelled my stepmom's Sunday NYT subscription, officially in my dad's name, I've been renewing that for 20yrs. At 94, my stepmom no longer reads the paper. The holidays can be a bittersweet time. We note the empty seats at the table, and we see so many other realities of human aging.
- Reposted by Harold PollackMedicaid waivers to address health-related social needs (HRSN) are under threat due to federal spending cuts, guidance rescinding HRSN language, and executive orders criminalizing homelessness, says @haroldpollack.bsky.social in a new Milbank Quarterly Opinion.
- Prooreading posts is apparently for the little peop3le......
- Concerning esults reported by Nagler et al: 59% of Americans are neutral/display some degree of support for cutting funds for work that "provides the foundational knowledge about how the natural world works, which might lead to future discoveries about human health www.milbank.org/quarterly/op...
- Concerning esults reported by Nagler et al: 59% of Americans are neutral/display some degree of support for cutting funds for work that "provides the foundational knowledge about how the natural world works, which might lead to future discoveries about human health www.milbank.org/quarterly/op...
- My most recent column in Milbank Quarterly Opinion. Medicaid’s Essential Investments to Address Health-Related Social Needs www.milbank.org/quarterly/op...
- Listening to a podcast where Jon Stewart is saying that the ACA is just subsidies to insurance companies. That’s akin to saying that SNAP is just subsidies to supermarkets.
- Racing to my train today, I pulled over halfway there with an "oh-f***k" realization: I forgot my phone. Just then, I looked up to see @veppol.bsky.social pull up behind, the phone in hand. Those of us blessed in this life to have folk who have our backs need to earn this out.
- Reposted by Harold PollackLet's talk about the grotesque Führerprinzip sweeping Republican institutions. With receipts. This is one of my favorite documents from the Reagan Library: a White Paper prepared for him that led up to one of the ideas he was most impassioned about, a "North American Free Trade Area."... 1/x
- The Real Patriots Will Be Marching Saturday—<i>Against</i> the un-Americans newrepublic.com/post/201921/... via @newrepublic.com
- Any followers happen to have at hand recent life tables for Black men in U.S. Urban settings? An authentic Pollack Bird Photography Mug on offer for this....
- Yet another attempt to share our piece on neuropsychiatric disorders among emergency department patients with intellectual and developmental disorders..... I"m struck by the prevalent early-onset dementia among patients w/Down syndrome. This graph speaks for itself.… link.growkudos.com/1f3s851ezgg
- Beth McGinty and Magdalena Cerda in Milbank Quarterly-- Medicaid Cuts Will Heighten the US Mental Health and Substance Use Crisis www.milbank.org/quarterly/op...
- Went to a real gym for the first time in a long while. I turned out to be rusty and complacent in the sparring and physical combat dept. Came away with some impressive bruises in various places from hard contact and a dramatic taikedown. I had just forgotten how tough those treadmills can be .
- 80 Years Ago, A Jewish Radical and Two Negro League Stars Led a Crusade to Integrate Baseball That Paved the Way for Jackie Robinson www.commondreams.org/opinion/80-y...
- Reposted by Harold PollackAll articles are freely available now, so check them out. There's still time to add them to your fall syllabi!
- Reposted by Harold PollackFinally there are two book reviews that are especially timely: Ann Keller's review of Pamuk's "Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society" and Robert Ostergard's review of Dahl's "The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure: Why Warning Was Not Enough"
- Reposted by Harold PollackIn the Tracking Health Reform section, Gusmano and Thompson analyze the Biden administration's efforts to minimize losses of Medicaid enrollment during the "great unwinding". read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...
- Reposted by Harold PollackLast, Hemauer and Warner examine the dynamics of public support for school-based mental health services, an increasingly critical point of access. They offer recommendations for policymakers and local school administrators based on the public opinion findings. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...
- Reposted by Harold PollackNext, Sprague et al. also examine state policy, looking at variation across state-level paid leave policies to assess inequities in access and coverage of these policies in the absence of a federal policy. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...
- Reposted by Harold PollackThe next article, by Erickson and Meyer-Gutbrod, examines the interactions between news attention to opioids, overdose rates, and state-level political attention to opioids mortality. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...
- Reposted by Harold PollackThe first article by Gudiksen et al. is a qualitative study examining employers' and insurers' perspectives about hospital consolidation. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...
- Reposted by Harold PollackNew issue of @jhppl.bsky.social just dropped (Volume 50, Issue 5). Check it out, for a set of wonderful articles on topics that span health care, opioids, paid leave, and mental health, a great representation of the diversity in JHPPL. Thread here:
- Reposted by Harold PollackA new editorial in @addictionjournal.bsky.social warns that US state and insurance provider policies are limiting patient access to higher doses of buprenorphine, one of the main medical treatments for opioid use disorders: doi.org/10.1111/add.... | DOI: 10.1111/add.70127 @haroldpollack.bsky.social
- Someone asked for my 4 fave aphorisms in English prose: 1. Hurt people hurt people 2. Where your treasure is, your heart will be there also 3. Watch the way he treated his last girlfriend. That's the way he'll treat you 4. If you sit down at the poker table and don't know who the sucker is--you do
- Removing arbitrary limitations on Buprenorphine is one piece of the puzzle in addressing the opioid epidemic. Nicole Gastala, Brianna Hudak, Mai T. Pho, Katharine Wilcox, and I in Addiction. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/A6UWCB...
- Reposted by Harold Pollack“This is one more basic test for the media. Are they going to focus on the pretextual attacks to discredit Cook —the mortgage allegations, or her qualifications — or will they recognize the pattern of a government using its powers to crush any independent sources of power?” *obviously racist attacks
- Reposted by Harold PollackMy all-purpose AI reform is banning computers from pretending they are human. Having names, saying "I," pretending to have feelings, representing what they emit as "advice," etc. That's where much of the mischief starts.
- This gift link should work. Losing a friend. Older men have the highest suicide rate of any demographic group. This challenge doesn't get nearly the attention it should. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/13/o...
- Losing a friend. Older men have the highest suicide rate of any demographic group. This challenge doesn't get nearly the attention it should. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/13/o...
- Losing a friend. Older men have the highest suicide rate of any demographic group. This challenge doesn't get nearly the attention it should. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/13/o...
- Andrew Goodman-Bacon is a terrific lecturer. That is the post.
- I cleaned the sensor on my camera. Wow--what a noticeable difference on these zoomed-in pictures... Great return on 10 minutes of effort.
- Trapped in an over-written Philip Roth novel--Chapter 68: "Senate confirms Jeanine Pirro as U.S. Attorney for DC." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...
- Reposted by Harold Pollack“ceteris paribus, the only constant is change”
- Reposted by Harold Pollacki don't know what any of that means but someone asked me my favorite pop-tart and i said brown sugar cinnamon.
- Reposted by Harold PollackI'm an economist teaching ectrics so I start with: let's assume we have no counterfactuals
- Reposted by Harold PollackAnd then introduce notation to reinvent them?
- Someone asked me my favorite econometric concept. Hands-down, I would say the Wald estimator for the effect of treatment on the treated group. It's intuitive to anyone. It's readily estimated with bootstrapped standard errors. Freaking. Awesome.
- The first sentence in my new econometrics lecture: "Imagine a world without counterfactuals...."
- Great issue!
- New in JHPPL: special issue marking Medicare’s 60th anniversary. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/issue/...
- Essential listening. Israel's clear violations of international law+war crimes that are causing thousands of deaths--command an effective and concerted response. This has nothing to do w/denying Hamas's 10/7 criminality, or rejecting the concept of Israel as a place of refuge for the Jewish people.
- Dr. Paul Spiegel of the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health discusses recent developments in Gaza and shares what this dire situation means for the future of the international humanitarian system. Listen now 🎧 podcast.publichealth.jhu.edu/925-starvati...
- Went birding and managed to pocket-dialed an exposure setting on my camera. Fortunately Lightroom allowed me to save some shots. Ugh. Unforced errors.
- Sarah McBride says much that must be said about how absolutist progressive advocacy lost its way, and undermines practical efforts to enact progressive policies and legislation through coalition politics. youtu.be/KlbNFsAGFRc?...
