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Aaron Schwartz

@aschwartz.bsky.social

2.9K followers 630 following 450 posts

MD-PhD professing at the University of Pennsylvania. Health, economics, and health economics.

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · May 14

Eric Roberts and @joefigs.bsky.social led a groundbreaking new study on Medicaid and Medicare, out today in NEJM. I’m lucky to have been a part of it.

Medicare saves lives. But is it enough to save lives of the most vulnerable Americans? The study suggests no; Medicaid still matters. (1/11)

Loss of Subsidized Drug Coverage and Mortality among Medicare Beneficiaries | NEJM

A total of 14 million Medicare beneficiaries receive the Low-Income Subsidy (LIS), which reduces cost sharing in Medicare Part D. Losing the LIS may impede medication access and affect mortality. U...

www.nejm.org

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 4h

And also, yes, I share Atheen’s concern that none of my research is particularly impactful these days, and social science is wandering the wilderness for the time being.

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 4h

Even when research studies are useless, devotion to research further the belief that careful consideration of observations is a useful way to approach decisions. The alternative approaches (power/violence, rhetoric/sophistry, identity/favoritism) are poison pills.

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 4h

…there aren’t enough geniuses with free time to solve all our important problems with 100% high impact research output.

We need home runs, singles, and even screw ups to move things forward.

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 4h

Because the stakes are so high in health, even small contributions can make a big difference.

The real reason a physician-investigator life is such a luxury is we get to make both clear contributions for specific patients and less certain contributions to populations…

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Reposted by Aaron Schwartz

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 2d

…ALS patients with the mutation show 6x the T-cell reactivity. The abstract of that paper ends “These findings highlight the potential of therapeutic strategies [for ALS] aimed at enhancing
regulatory T cells” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.nature.com

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 2d

Yentli inherited the c9orf72 mutation that causes ALS from her dad, Frank. Frank, a beloved public school educator, who died last year at 66.

14 years after c9orf72 was discovered as a cause ALS, last week, researchers discovered that T-cells are highly reactive to c9orf72 in ALS patients….

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 2d

Here is Yentli, one of our MD-PhD students at Penn, speaking powerfully about the stakes here.

Regulatory T-cells could be a key to defeating the genetic mutation that killed her dad with ALS and threatens her life.

From a speech at her high school this week: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 2d

It is possible that enhancing the activity of regulatory T-cells, could help treat these diseases or prevent the diseases from progressing.

See, for example, the new study on ALS, highlighting the possible role for treatments aimed at regulatory T cells www.nature.com/articles/s41...
(3/3)

Autoimmune response to C9orf72 protein in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Nature

An analysis of T cell responses in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis shows that the C9orf72 antigen is a key target of autoimmune responses in the disease, and identifies C9orf72 epitopes that are recognized.

www.nature.com

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 2d

The past few years have seen several compelling studies linking neurological diseases to infection and our immune responses. For example:

Dementia: Eyting et al, Nature 2025
Multiple sclerosis: Bjornevik et al, Science 2022
ALS: Michaelis et al, Nature (just this week!)
(2/3)

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 2d

Today's Nobel Prize in Medicine went to the discoverers of regulatory T-cells. How could this discovery about our immune systems change the world?

Here is one possible way: leading to treatments for terrible neurological diseases. (1/3)

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 4d

Ok you were right

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 4d

Believe in the old man!

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Reposted by Aaron Schwartz

Mirya R. Holman @mirya.bsky.social · 5d

"Full-day kindergarten expansions were responsible for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergartenaged children in this time frame."

AEA Journals @aeajournals.bsky.social · 6d

Forthcoming in AEJ: Economic Policy: "A Matter of Time? Measuring Effects of Public Schooling Expansions on Families" by Chloe R. Gibbs, Jocelyn Wikle, and Riley Wilson. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

A Matter of Time? Measuring Effects of Public Schooling Expansions on Families

(Forthcoming Article) - We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children— through duration expansions to the kindergarten day—to better understand how an impli...

www.aeaweb.org

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 9d

Not enough discourse on the Chalamet discount rate

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 12d

It was very kind of him to open his home to a random college student.

One day, we were talking about his brother, Howard, who won a Nobel for discovering reverse transcriptase. “A lesson: Don’t compare yourself to your brother,” he said. Good advice.

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 12d

I missed this sad news last month. I first saw Peter Temin’s name when I was a college freshman. It was on a list of people willing to house Swarthmore students over the summer. I lived in his spare bedroom in Cambridge during the summer of 2006, while I was working at a microbio lab…

Tim Bresnahan @timobres.bsky.social · Aug 5

Peter Temin, economic historian at MIT, has passed away. He worked both on problems of understanding the past (e.g. "Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression?") and how how the past shapes the present (e.g. "The Vanishing Middle Class.") Terrific scholar and mentor, generous critic.

Reposted by Aaron Schwartz

Emily Moin @emilymoin.com · 14d

I'm as enthusiastic as anyone else is about effective treatments for Huntington's disease but, for anyone who's curious about the methodology –

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 14d

Few topics in health care policy can incite passions like insurer prior authorization. What do researchers know about this practice? I spoke with @dgorenstein.bsky.social and @lesliemwalker.bsky.social for the latest @tradeoffs.org podcast.

tradeoffs.org/2025/09/25/a...

A Closer Look at a Widely Despised Health Insurance Policy

Every year, millions of people’s medical care runs into the roadblock known as prior authorization, which requires a patient’s health insurer to sign off before chemotherapy, surgery or countless othe...

tradeoffs.org

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 15d

The paper that clarified this issue for me is Gelman and Imbens. But i’m not sure that’s what you are looking for. www.nber.org/system/files...

www.nber.org

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Reposted by Aaron Schwartz

Matthew Herper @matthewherper.bsky.social · 19d

Winner of mRNA Nobel Prize says ACIP member’s claim that Covid vaccines persist is “absolutely impossible”

In Q&A, Drew Weissman says vast literature shows Covid shots are safe, refutes claims from Retsef Levi
www.statnews.com/2025/09/20/d...

Winner of mRNA Nobel Prize says ACIP member’s claim that Covid vaccines persist is “absolutely impossible”

In a Q&A with STAT, Nobel winner Drew Weissman addressed concerns raised about Covid shots at a recent meeting of federal vaccine advisers.

www.statnews.com

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 20d

Harvard Medical School to cut research by 20%. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Harvard Medical School to Cut 20 Percent of Research Spending, Dean Says in Annual Address | News | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 said the University’s central administration had instructed him to cut spending on the Medical School’s research enterprise by at least 20 percent by th...

www.thecrimson.com

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Reposted by Aaron Schwartz

Jason L. Schwartz @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social · 20d

Open mic picked up someone saying “You’re an idiot!” as ACIP member Retsef Levi was speaking. So things are going great in vaccine policy.

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Reposted by Aaron Schwartz

Jason L. Schwartz @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social · 20d

A last-minute surprise vote by ACIP to table indefinitely their vote on removing the HepB birth dose rec. A pleasant surprise (for the time being, at least…)

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Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 20d

Yes. If you get vaccinated you are less likely to get hep b and have a test result that confuses you and your doctor.

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