Informing Health Initiatives

Summary of Requests and Assistance Provided, November 2009-February 2010

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A summary of requests to the Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends (CFACT) for information to inform health initiatives, and of the assistance provided from November 2009 through February 2010.

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Source of Request	Request	Date	Staff Responsible	Assistance Provided
Senate Finance Committee	Estimates of the concentration and persistence in the level of health expenditures	11/09	Steven Cohen William Yu	Provided detailed estimates of the concentration and persistence in the level of health expenditures over time, controlling for age and health insurance coverage status.
Congressional Research Service	Estimates of employer costs for health insurance as a percent of establishment payroll	12/09	Beth Crimmell	Provided detailed tabulations of employer costs for health insurance as a percent of establishment payroll, by firm size, based on the MEPS—Insurance Component 2008 private coverage data.
House Ways and Means Committee	Estimates of employer-sponsored premiums	1/10	Jim Branscome	Provided distributional estimates of employer-sponsored premiums, with a focus on premiums above the 80th percentile in the cost distribution, further disaggregated by industry type. Estimates derived from the MEPS—Insurance Component 2008 private coverage data.
Office of Health Reform, HHS	Estimates of out-of- pocket spending for medical care	1/10	Didem Bernard	Provided detailed estimates out-of-pocket spending for medical care according to certain dollar thresholds, by specific household characteristics.
Senate Joint Committee on Taxation	Characteristics of individuals with high cost premiums	1/10	Jim Branscome	Provided detailed estimates of the socio-demographic characteristics of individuals with high cost premiums.
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, HHS	Estimates of the population with extreme financial burdens for health care	2/10	Tom Selden	Provided estimates of the population with extreme financial burdens for health care, obtained from the MEPS. A national estimate for the U.S. was produced that is consistent with WHO and World Bank methods.

Requests for data and publications: Descriptive statistics for all assistance provided are available upon request. Please contact Cindy Nunley at cindy.nunley@ahrq.hhs.gov.

Note: HHS is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; MEPS is the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey; WHO is the World Health Organization.

Source: Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Current as of March 2010

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Internet Citation:

Informing Health Initiatives: Summary of Requests and Assistance Provided, November 2009-February 2010. Agency for Healthcare Research Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/data/meps/ihisum0210.htm

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