Minnesota’s health care marketplace is a complex and continually evolving set of relationships between consumers, health care providers, health insurance plans, employers, and government. The Health Economics Program’s “Minnesota Health Care Markets Chartbook” is intended to provide convenient access to the most up-to-date Minnesota statistics on a wide variety of topics, including health care spending and drivers of increased health care costs in Minnesota, access to insurance coverage, and health care provider trends. The chartbook is updated regularly as new data and analysis become available.

Each section of the chartbook can be viewed individually in Adobe as a PDF file or downloaded as a PowerPoint file.

The chartbook is organized into nine sections, as follows:

Section 1: Minnesota Health Care Spending and Cost Drivers - This section includes information on total health care spending in Minnesota, by sources and uses of funds. It also includes comparisons to national health care spending estimates. Finally, it includes information on trends in premiums and underlying costs in Minnesota's private health insurance market. (Last update: October 2024)

Section 1: Minnesota Health Care Spending and Cost Drivers (PDF)

Section 2: Trends and Variation in Health Insurance Coverage - This section provides an overview of the sources of health insurance coverage for Minnesotans, how the sources of coverage have changed over time, and variation in sources of private health insurance. (Last update: November 2024)

Section 2: Trends and Variation in Health Insurance Coverage (PDF)

Section 3: Employment-Based Health Insurance - This section provides an overview of the market for employer-based health insurance in Minnesota, using pooled data from the Insurance Component of the federal Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. It includes information on variations in health insurance offer rates, employee eligibility, take-up rates, total premiums and employer/employee shares, and other enrollee cost sharing requirements. (Last update: April 2024)

Section 3: Employment-Based Health Insurance (PDF)

Section 4: Individual and Small Group Health Insurance Markets – This section presents information on trends in Minnesota’s individual and small group health insurance markets and benefit sets. It includes information on enrollment trends, premium growth, benefit sets (deductibles, copayments, etc.), and health plan market shares. (Last update: October 2024)

Section 4: Individual and Small Group Health Insurance Markets (PDF)

Section 5: Public Health Insurance Programs – This section provides information on key enrollment and spending trends in publicly-financed health insurance programs that cover Minnesotans, including Medicare, Medical Assistance (Medicaid) and MinnesotaCare. (Last update: October 2024)

Section 5: Public Health Insurance Programs (PDF)

Section 6: Uninsurance, Forgone Care, and the Safety Net – This section provides an in-depth look at the rate of uninsurance in Minnesota and how it varies over time and by demographic characteristics of Minnesotans. Slides describe the makeup of the uninsured population by the demographic and employment characteristics and provide comparison to the population overall. Additionally, the slides look at the rates at which different populations of Minnesotans have forgone care due to costs. This section includes further a detailed look at uncompensated care provided by Minnesota community hospitals. (Last update: December 2022)

Supplemental Information:

Detailed tables on health insurance coverage and forgone care across multiple demographics; these tables are shown graphically in section 6. Section 6 Supplement (PDF)

Section 7: Health Plan Companies – This section presents information on the size of the Minnesota health insurance market, the relative share held by health plan companies, and an accumulation of reserves. (Last update: September 2024)

Section 7: Health Plans (PDF)

Supplemental Information:

Contains details on the organizational structure of health plan companies operating in Minnesota, granular financial tables, and data visualizations. Section 7 Supplement (PDF) (Last update: September 2024)

Section 8: Health Care Providers and Service Availability - This section provides an overview of trends related to health care providers and facilities, including hospitals, physician services, clinics, diagnostic imaging and freestanding outpatient surgical centers. The hospital portion (Section 8A) includes information on system capacity, utilization trends, financial trends, and uncompensated care. The clinic, imaging and other facilities portion (Section 8B) provides a summary of the number of primary care and specialty physicians per 1,000 people in different areas of the state as well as information on locations, utilization, and affiliation of clinics, diagnostic imaging and freestanding outpatient surgical centers. Supplemental information on financial and utilization trends by hospitals can be downloaded in Excel (.xlsx). (Last update: November 2024)

Supplemental Information:

Inpatient Acute Care Beds at MN Community Hospitals, 2013 to 2023 (Excel)
- Includes: Licensed Beds, Available Beds, etc.
Financial Statistics for Minnesota Community Hospitals, 2013 to 2023 (Excel)
- Includes: Net Income, Profit Margin, etc.
Service Utilization at Minnesota Community Hospitals, 2013 to 2023 (Excel)
- Includes: Acute Care Admissions, Outpatient Registration, etc.
Minnesota Hospital Uncompensated Care and Its Components, 2013 to 2023 (Excel - 42KB)
- Includes: Charity Care, Bad Debt, etc.

Section 9: Statewide Quality Reporting and Measurement System – This chartbook section provides an overview of summary results for selected physician clinic quality measures. It includes trends over time, and results stratified by health insurance type, patient gender, and patient race/ethnicity. (Last update: April 2022)

Section 9: Statewide Quality Reporting and Measurement System (PDF)

Minnesota Health Care Markets Chartbook Summaries

Rural Health Care in Minnesota: Data Highlights Chartbook

This chartbook section provides an overview of rural Minnesota's demographic characteristics, the health system structure and financing, health care workforce, and the availability and use of health care services. (Last update: November 2023)

Useful data sources for cross-state comparisons

While most of the information included in the chartbook comes from data collection efforts that are specific to Minnesota and that have been designed to enable detailed analysis of Minnesota’s health care markets, for some purposes it is useful to consult a data source that provides estimates that are comparable across states. The following links are to some of the most commonly used sources of data for cross-state comparisons:

Statehealthfacts.org This site, sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, is a compilation of state-level data related to health care on a wide range of topics from many different sources.
Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component – This survey of employers, conducted annually by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), provides state-level data on the market for employment-based health insurance. While this can be a useful source for cross-state comparisons, the estimates should be used with caution because some of the estimates have a large margin of error – in other words, differences between states (or between a state estimate and the national average, or differences over time) may appear large even though they are not statistically different.

Other sources of Minnesota-specific data

The websites listed below include additional Minnesota-specific information related to the state’s health care marketplace.

Minnesota Department of Human Services:

Health Care Programs Eligibility and Enrollment Information - Information on public health care program eligibility and up-to-date enrollment information by program.
Reports and Forecasts Division – Detailed enrollment and financial information on Minnesota’s health care coverage programs.
Managed Care Health Contracting Information - All public information about managed care plans that contract with the state to provide health care for enrollees in public programs is now available. The website, established by DHS under a March 23 executive order from Gov. Mark Dayton, includes all public data and reports related to managed care plan contracts. It is part of a state reform effort that also involves the Departments of Commerce and Health.

Minnesota Hospital Association – The Minnesota Hospital Association’s website presents statistical information on Minnesota hospitals, including some measures that are not included in the Minnesota Health Care Markets Chartbook. The Minnesota Hospital Association offers Quick Facts About MN Hospitals that includes some statistical information not included in the Minnesota Health Care Markets Chartbook.