Special Day of Data Event: “Why is American Health Care So Expensive?” A Talk with Zack Cooper

“Why Is American Health Care So Expensive? Using Big Data to Provide an Answer”
A Talk with Zack Cooper

This talk will provide an overview of Cooper’s work using the nation’s largest database of private insurance claims to analyze why health care spending on the privately insured is expensive.  In 2012, Cooper and his colleagues worked with the Health Care Cost Institute to create a database of insurance claims for beneficiaries insured by Aetna, UnitedHealth, and Humana. The data runs from 2002 through 2011 and captures comprehensive spending data on one third of privately insured Americans, and roughly 5% of US GDP.  The talk will examine the process of accessing data, using the 12 terabyte dataset, and the early conclusions from the work.

Zack Cooper is an Assistant Professor of Public Health and Economics at Yale University, and Director of ISPS Health, a program of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies where he is also a Resident Faculty Fellow. His work is focused on examining the intersection of public policy heath care, and economics.  In particular, Cooper’s work focuses on the impact of competition and monetary and non-monetary incentives on health care providers’ quality, prices, and productivity.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the Yale Center for Science and Social Science Information as part of the Day of Data Spring Discussion Series 2015.

Link to //calendar.yale.edu/cal/library/month/20150302/All/CAL-2c9cb3cd-4b13b0bc-014b-dbe6b633-000034bbbedework@yale.edu/">Yale Calendar.