Reducing health care spending, one step at a time.

The Health Care Affordability Lab at Yale produces new evidence to guide policymakers and lower health care costs for individuals and the health care system.

We don’t have to wait for major reforms to save billions on health care. The 1% Steps for Health Care Reform project identifies a menu of evidence-based policy changes based on the work of leading scholars that would lower health care costs without compromising quality.
In the $5.5 trillion health care sector, there is no single solution that would meaningfully lower spending. But there are dozens of smaller-scale inefficiencies that, if addressed, would reduce spending by a percent or two of total health expenditure each—so-called 1% problems. None of them requires an overhaul to the health care sector.
About The Project

Featured Briefs

From providers to payers to prescription drugs, our briefs target every corner of the health care sector.

view policy briefs

11%-16%

of Government Spending on Individual Market Premium Subsidies
(0.11%-0.17% of Total Health Spending)
Payers

Integrating Individual and Small Group Health Insurance Markets to Reduce Premiums and Administrative Costs

$1.56B

of Medicare Spending
(0.03% of Total Health Spending)
Providers

Matching Post-Acute Care to Clinical Need: Reducing Unnecessary Skilled Nursing Facility Use

Up to $0.9B

per Year at Full Vaccination
(0.02% of Total Health Spending)
Providers

Expanding Convenient Access to the Flu Vaccine for Young Children

Meet the Authors

This project relies on the expertise of leading academics and health policy experts. Each contributor has developed a rigorous, data-driven recommendation, based on their own scholarship, that addresses a specific inefficiency in U.S. health care and proposes concrete steps to fix it.

View All Authors