Further Reading
Premium subscribers to Investigative Economics receive access to the Substack chat with updates that wouldn’t otherwise warrant full stories. For the non-subscribers, below is a list of some recent updates.
Autism Epidemic Analysis Confirmed in New York Times Story
Back in June, a member of the DSM IV task force confirmed in the New York Times that it was changes to autism criteria that led to the sharp upswing in autism diagnoses, validating the prior Investigative Economics story on the subject.
NPR Funding Truly Was From the Government
In July, Trump eliminated a large portion of National Public Radio’s (NPR) budget—about $1.1 billion worth for fiscal years 2026 and 2027—effectively shuttering the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
This effectively confirms the prior Investigative Economics story detailing how NPR got the majority of their funding from the federal government through member station subscriptions, despite NPR’s insistence that it wasn’t the case and federal funding was only a sliver of their income.
AIDS Statistics’ Unreliability Has Been An Issue For Some Time
Investigative Economics published two separate stories on the unreliability of HIV/AIDS statistics related to changes in disease definition, comorbidities, symptom biases, and high false-positive rates.
While not well publicized, many of these issues were a source of concern for a subset of the medical community and were highlighted in a 2009 documentary House of Numbers.
Solar Tax Credits Were Higher Than Expected
A small update to our recent story on investment tax credit (ITC) for solar investments: the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated total credits given by the IRS in 2021 to be a little over $7 billion. But likely it was higher as there was evidence the JCT’s number were a substantial underestimation.
And that can now be confirmed. The JCT was off by about $1 billion. IRS annual summary for that year shows credits at almost $8.2 billion, far beyond the likely amount invested in solar capacity, which might be around $4 billion.
Either way, solar tax credits through the ITC are set to expire by January of 2026 as per the Big Beautiful Bill signed in July.
DC Crime Statistics Get A Formal investigation
Investigative Economics published numerous stories on the varying inconsistencies in Washington, DC’s crime statistics and Congress has taken notice of the issue by launching a formal investigation into the city’s numbers in August.
Not only were the numbers related to homicides and gun prosecutions varying wildly, when the national guard and other federal enforcement agencies started policing the city in September, homicides somehow came to an abrupt albeit temporary halt.
Teva Concedes to Kickbacks in Pharma Pricing
In October of 2024, Teva Pharmaceuticals entered a plea agreement related to kickbacks and price coordination. Part of it revolved around a single Teva employee coordinating generic drug price hikes.
That lines up with a 2018 Investigative Economics story detailing how generic drug prices were suddenly moving in lock-step with each other across manufacturers as if it was coordinated beginning in 2015.
ACA Rules Led to UnitedHealth’s Market Consolidation
Anybody tracking the story of UnitedHealth since the targeted assassination of one of its CEOs recently might want to check out Investigative Economics’ story from 2023 on the exposed flaws of Obamacare since the pandemic. The short version is that premiums have gone up a lot, and attempts to direct spending towards care using medical loss ratios has been feckless as insurers just charge higher rates and move spending around.
How that ties into UnitedHealth is that the massive insurer used the law to expand and buy up other providers and physician groups. It leveraged its market share to walk around loss ratio rules and benefit from vertical integration, which might come with some conflicts of interest. Matt Stoller has an in-depth take on the subject.
As a result, the DOJ opened an antitrust investigation into UnitedHealth, and before disclosing that info to shareholders, CEO and murder victim Brian Thompson sold a large chunk of shares, which led to an insider trading investigation.
