I originally got the term “zombie lies” from the healthcare field, specifically Canadian health care, where there are certain stories — like the one about hordes of Canadians crossing the border to seek treatment — that remain part of what everyone, or at least everyone on the right, knows to be true no matter how many times they have been shown to be false. Kill them, and they just keep shambling along.

The reason this happens so much in health economics is clear: the realities of health care — especially the complete absence of free-market success stories and the evident superiority of public systems at cost control — are just not supposed to happen in the conservative world view. Hence the temptation to make stuff up, to seize on stories that are what right-wingers think should be happening and pretend that they are what really happens.

So I guess I’m not surprised that Aaron Carroll, who is a real expert on health policy, looks at Tyler Cowen’s weekend op-ed on on Medicaid and finds it full of intellectual zombies. Read the whole thing.