Offer Rates, Enrollment Rates, Premiums, and Employee Contributions for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance in the Private Sector for the 10 Largest Metropolitan Areas, 2012

Employer-sponsored health insurance for current workers is one of the primary sources of health insurance coverage in the United States. According to data from the Insurance Component of the 2012 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-IC), approximately 94.1 million of the 111.1 million employees from the private sector worked in firms where the employer offered health insurance. Of those employees who worked where health insurance was offered, approximately 55.4 million were enrolled. This Statistical Brief presents average offer and enrollment rates, and premiums and employee contributions to premiums for single, employee-plus-one, and family coverage sponsored by private-sector employers in the 10 largest metropolitan areas of the United States. It compares these values to national averages for the private sector. These values for employer-sponsored health insurance vary considerably by geographic area and other factors, such as size of firm and industry. The MEPS-IC also collects information from state and local governments, but those data are not included in this Brief. Only those estimates with a statistically significant difference from the national average at the 0.05 percent significance level are noted in the text.