One year ago today I started THCB not knowing what to expect. The first post was about What’s wrong with Medicare and it still rings true one year, and one massive political fight which resulted in the MMA, later. In fact yesterday’s article in the NY Times about the failure of a "successful" Medicare disease management experiment in Washington state confirms my very first post’s contention that financial incentives in Medicare are set up the wrong way. More on that tomorrow.All these improvements are the work of Genny Pham-Kanter, who is THCB’s first ever blogmeister. Genny is a very talented PhD candidate in Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago, who just to make sure that she’s really overqualified also has graduate degrees from both Cambridge and Harvard. As she gets the site under control you’ll also be seeing posts from her, and she’ll be taking over some of the back and forth with contributors. So please make her feel welcome!

I’ve enjoyed writing the blog and most especially have enjoyed meeting via email (and in real life in some cases) a whole group of new collaborators and sparring partners. Thanks for reading, thanks for emailing, and thanks to everyone who contributed. I’m looking forward to another year.

And in that new year I hope THCB will continue to improve. You may have noticed a big improvement in the layout in recent days, and there’s more to come in making the site more user-friendly and easier to navigate. Included in these improvements, and coming soon (at long last) will be a topic index which will make it much easier to find particular posts, or all posts under a certain heading. If you have any suggestions please email me.