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1% Steps

The 1% Steps for Health Care Reform Project

is bringing together leading academics to identify discrete problems in the US health system and offer evidence-based steps to address them.

Image of a nurse with mask and stethoscope with an American flag in it
Adobe Stock / Alex

The 1% Steps for Health Care Reform Project is bringing together leading academics to identify discrete problems in the US health system and offer evidence-based steps to address them. Directed by Yale University Professors Zack Cooper and Fiona Scott Morton, the goal of the 1% Steps Project is to offer a menu of tangible steps that policy makers can take to lower health care costs in the US.

The project is driven by the belief that there is not one thing wrong in the US health system, but rather that differentially high health care spending in the US is the result of a series of discrete problems that can and must be addressed, one by one. We believe that relying on evidence-based policies to address these individual problems is the most effective way to make our health system more efficient and that academics should offer concrete steps, based on their research, that policy makers can use to lower health care costs without harming quality. This is not a static project. We will be continuing to work with leading scholars to identify inefficiencies and put forward specific policies that can lower US health care spending.

Experts

Associate Professor of Public Health (Health Policy), of Economics, and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies
Zack Cooper

The project, to date, includes 16 policy briefs that, if all addressed, would sum to a 9 percent reduction in health spending.