Zack Cooper

Zack Cooper is an Associate Professor of Public Health and of Economics at Yale University where he also serves as director of Health Policy at the school’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy.

  • Zack Cooper Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    $10,001 - $20,000

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Zack Cooper Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    $10,001 - $20,000

  • Languages Spoken

    English

Suggested Keynote Speaker Programs

THE HIDDEN TAX: HOW HEALTH CARE IS RESHAPING HOUSEHOLD FINANCES AND THE US ECONOMY

Most people don’t realize how much of their financial lives and the wider US economy are quietly being shaped by the health care system. Even when they’re not accessing the US health system, families are stilling paying for it — in stagnant wages, shrinking paychecks...

Most people don’t realize how much of their financial lives and the wider US economy are quietly being shaped by the health care system. Even when they’re not accessing the US health system, families are stilling paying for it — in stagnant wages, shrinking paychecks, and premiums and deductibles that climb faster than incomes. Health care has become the single largest, least-understood drag on American household finances and the US economy.

In this keynote, Yale economist  Zack Cooper pulls back the curtain on how the cost of health care reaches into every paycheck and is threatening the American dream. Drawing on his research on health spending, economic growth, and income inequality, Zack explains the mechanism most people miss: how employer health costs suppress wages, how rising deductibles reshape household budgets, and why the typical family feels the pinch even when the economy is growing. Critically, he also takes the next step of explaining what we have to do if we want to change it.

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WHAT'S REALLY DRIVING HEALTH CARE COSTS — AND WHY NO ONE'S FIXING IT

Americans spend more than $15,000 per person each year on health care — far more than any other country — and almost everyone has a theory about why. Most of those theories are wrong. The real story is more surprising, more concrete, and more fixable than the ...

Americans spend more than $15,000 per person each year on health care — far more than any other country — and almost everyone has a theory about why. Most of those theories are wrong. The real story is more surprising, more concrete, and more fixable than the political debate suggests.

In this keynote, Yale economist Zack Cooper offers a clear-eyed tour of what actually makes the US health system an international outlier. Zack has spent his career researching these questions and advising state and federal authorities on health care reform, and he writes about them each month for a national audience.

The result is a keynote that replaces slogans with evidence, and leaves an audience genuinely understanding the system they all pay into but few understand.

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About Keynote Speaker Zack Cooper

Zack Cooper is an Associate Professor of Public Health and Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. He also serves as Director of Health Policy at Yale’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy. Professor Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing data-driven scholarship that can inform public policy. In his academic work, he has analyzed the impact of competition in hospital and insurance markets, studied the influence of price transparency on consumer behavior, investigated the causes of surprise out-of-network bills, and examined the influence of electoral politics on health care spending growth. Cooper has published his research in leading economics and medical journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also presented his research at the White House, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

In January 2021, Zack Cooper and Fiona Scott Morton launched the 1% Steps for Health Care Reform project. The aim of the project is harness the power of rigorous economic scholarship to identify tangible steps that can be taken to reduce health care spending in the US without harming quality. The project includes 16 briefs written by leading economists that describe 16 specific interventions, which would collectively lower health care costs in the US by approximately $400 billion annually. You can hear a description of the project on the Freakenomics Podcast.

Cooper received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and his PhD from the London School of Economics, where he received the Richard Titmuss prize for Best PhD thesis. He was an Economic and Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in economics at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance where he remains a Faculty Associate. Cooper is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a 2019 winner of and Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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