Health Care Cost and Affordability
Using data from the Minnesota Health Access Survey, we examine changes in health insurance coverage between 2023 and 2025 among working adults at large and small employers; this analysis helps to illustrate the substantial role public coverage plays in providing health insurance to MN’s workers.
What are prior authorizations, referrals, and Essential Health Benefits? Our experts define common health insurance terms to help readers understand foundational concepts in health policy and insurance.
2026 marks the 30th year of the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), what they call their “30 Years of Impact.” To honor CHCF’s 30th anniversary, this post will highlight a sample of SHADAC/CHCF projects spanning the last 10 years.
SHADAC has tracked trends in ESI health insurance costs for years using the latest Medical Expenditure Panel Survey–Insurance Component (MEPS-IC) data. According to recently released 2025 MEPS data, ESI family plan premiums grew at over twice the rate seen in 2024—read on for more details.
Increasingly high and unaffordable health care costs can lead to forgoing medical care, which can impact overall health. This blog explores rates of forgone care due to cost over time, by state, and by subgroup using SHADAC’s State Health Compare.
The latest data released from the Minnesota Health Access Survey (MNHA) show sharp increases in the uninsured rate in the state, increasing from 3.8% (a historic low) to 5.8% between 2023 and 2025. This equates to approximately 116,000 more Minnesotans being uninsured. Learn more in this blog.
In this brief for the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), we use California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) data to better understand California health care costs, including whether and how affordability may have changed between 2019 and 2024.
SHADAC researchers use MEPS-IC data to look at national and state-level employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) access, enrollment, and cost data in 2024 as compared to 2023.
What are health insurance premiums? What is a deductible? SHADAC reviews these and other common health insurance terms in this blog.
This issue of gaps in care for teen health and young adults was the focus of a recent research study by SHADAC Research Fellow Robert Hest and SHADAC co-founder Kathleen Call published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.