The Incidental Economist

The Incidental Economist is a blog focused on health economics and policy. It was founded in 2009 by Austin Frakt, a health economist at Boston University, who has since been joined by Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician at Indiana University School of Medicine, as co-Editor-in-Chief. The site features posts by the two as well as a number of contributing writers, who are primarily academics based across the United States. The authors often synthesize academic literature as it might relate to contemporary health policy issues.
The blog gained prominence in 2009–10 when it was often cited by journalists, such as Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum, Jonathan Cohn and Andrew Sullivan, who were covering the health care reform process that would eventually culminate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The blog remains one of the most widely cited health policy blogs on the Internet.