Author: Larry Chapman
Recently the federal government released one of the most comprehensive and authoritative chartbooks profiling health insurance coverage, costs and trends for working Americans. This 168 page publication provides one of the most sweeping and most valid profiles of employer provided health insurance coverage and characteristics that has been published to date. It also includes a large number of useful graphs and charts that can be extracted and used to educate senior management and employees on health cost and health insurance related issues.
The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component (MEPS-IC) is an annual survey of private employers and State and local governments. The MEPS-IC produces national and State level estimates of employer-sponsored insurance, including offered plans, costs, employee eligibility, and number of enrollees along with a number of other issues.
The types of issues addressed in the Chartbook includes:
- Major trends affecting health insurance coverage.
- Differences in health insurance coverage by firm size.
- Trends and patterns for single, employee plus one and family coverage.
- Health insurance offer and take up rates.
- Premium costs and employee cost sharing trends.
- Employee cost sharing patterns.
- Employee eligibility and enrollment rates and trends.
- Health plan characteristics by firm size and type.
Wellness professionals can use this information to:
- Compare their organization or client organizations health plan coverage.
- Design wellness health plan incentives.
- Estimate potential for economic return for wellness programming.
- Augment employee education on health care consumerism and medical self-care.
- Estimate likely health plan premium growth rates.
In summary, this is an excellent comprehensive reference on health insurance coverage and costs in the U.S. up to and including 2016.
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I hope this tool helps you reach your wellness programming goals! Drop me a note and let me know your thoughts and if you found it to be helpful: [email protected].