Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Health Insurance Data

Question: Where can I find data on the cost for private sector employees to purchase health/medical insurance in Alaska?
Answer: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services compiles data on private sector health insurance costs at the State level. You can access the data at Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Here, you can find total premium costs by state per private sector employee, the average employee contribution, and many other data elements. Try clicking "Summary Data Tables" in the left navigation bar under "Data and Statistics," then scroll to the bottom of the page and choose "State and Metro Area Tables." You can limit the tables you’d like to retrieve by year, table “series,” table “subseries,” and keywords. Choosing the subseries "Premiums/Contributions/Enrollments" will retrieve tables identifying premium costs.