News & Media

Highly concentrated—and, by extension, less economically competitive—hospital markets are ubiquitous across the country and the norm in rural states Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota, according to a market analysis tool unveiled this week by Yale University’s recently launched Health Care Affordability Lab.

The newly launched Health Care Affordability Lab within New Haven, Conn.-based Yale University’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy released a tool March 9 that allows users to explore hospital mergers, closures, ownership changes and market concentration across all 50 states.

Every hospital in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming is in a highly concentrated market, according to a blog post from Yale's new Health Care Affordability Lab.

In this interview, Zack Cooper, PhD, associate professor of public health and economics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, explains why he believes the growth in hospital prices is driving high healthcare costs.

The Yale School of Public Health article “Translating science” explains how researchers at YSPH are actively working with communities and partners to turn scientific evidence into practical public health actions that improve health outcomes in the real world.

Republicans think patients should be shopping for better health care prices. The party has long pushed to give patients money and let consumers do the work of reducing costs.

On Wednesday, December 10, 2025, Yale Professor Zack Cooper testified on Capitol Hill that subsidies for ACA individual marketplace plans should be extended and encouraged Congress to do more to rein in health care spending.

The debate over whether to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies has consumed lawmakers over the past two months, precipitated a government shutdown and sparked Republican infighting. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong debate.

Zack Cooper, Associate Professor of Public Health and Economics at Yale University, joins CNN's Jessica Dean to talk about the rising cost of health care and health insurance.