Tracking Health Care Costs and Quality
Tracking job-based benefits such as health insurance involves not just tracking their incidence or scope (how many workers and dependents have access), but also their costs and quality. The value of job-based coverage slips, for example, as out-of-pocket costs (co-payments, deductibles) climb or as the scope of that coverage (such as annual caps) is limited. The details of coverage may be just as important as whether or not it is offered to employees.
The incidence of job-base health insurance is tracked annually by the Census Bureau, see their fall release on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage. For good digests of the meaning of those numbers, see the follow up work of Elise Gould at EPI; John Schmitt at CEPR, and the Commonwealth Fund. See also extensive but unevenly updated databook maintained by the Employment Benefits Research Institute.
For the details of health insurance plans, see the annual Employer Health Benefits Survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation,
Discussion of "Tracking Health Care Costs and Quality"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...