June 9, 2011: From the desk of SHADAC Director Lynn Blewett
Times are tough, even in Minnesota...
The following figure from the Minnesota Department of Health, Health Economics Program (HEP) annual report on health care spending illustrates the impact of the recession on Minnesota’s health care system: Health care spending growth is now the lowest it has been in the past ten years, increasing just 3.8 percent between 2008-2009. During this time MN saw a drop in per capita income of 3.3 percent and an unemployment rate in 2009 as high as 8.4 percent, according to the Council of State Governments Midwest.
Paralleling these drops in income and employment, more Minnesotans lost insurance coverage from 2008 to 2009: Uninsurance rose from 10.8 percent to 11.4 percent for working aged adults, and from 6.0 percent to 7.2 percent for children. (See SHADAC's Data Center for additional insurance coverage results.)
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About the Data: Minnesota is one of only a few states that collects and reports detailed data on public and private health care expenditures. The state modeled its efforts after the Center for Medicaid and Medicaid Services (CMS) National Health Expenditure Accounts and has been collecting state-specific data for over ten years. While CMS does occasionally produce state-level estimates of its national health accounts (the latest such estimates were for 2004), Minnesota’s system provides state-specific data collection and annual reports. For more history of the program, see Blewett et al. 1999. |