Benefits Benchmarking Calculator How your health plan compares to the KFF 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey and AHRQ MEPS-IC state data

Methodology & sources

• KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey 2025 — the 27th annual EHBS, fielded January–July 2025 with 1,862 employer interviews and released October 22, 2025. It represents non-federal public and private employers; beginning with the 2025 survey the universe is firms with ten or more workers. Premiums, worker contributions, deductibles, plan-type enrollment and HDHP/SO detail come from the official section table workbooks. 2025 EHBS →
• AHRQ MEPS-IC 2024 — the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component, Table Series II (Private-Sector Data by Firm Size and State), covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Premiums and contributions are annual dollars per enrolled employee at private-sector establishments that offer health insurance. 2024 Table Series II (PDF) →
• The two surveys are separate benchmarks and are never blended. MEPS-IC averages run lower than KFF's because of methodology: MEPS-IC is an establishment-level survey of all private-sector establishments, weights premiums per enrolled employee, and reports employee-plus-one as its own tier, while KFF surveys firms, weights differently, and folds employee-plus-one into family/other tiers. Every bar and row on this page is labeled with its source; none is an average of the two.
• Worker share of premium is shown exactly as published. KFF calculates the average percentage of premium paid by workers as a weighted average of firm-level percentages, so it does not equal average contribution ÷ average premium and must never be multiplied against a premium average. This tool never recomputes it; gaps against your own share are reported in percentage points.
• Deductible benchmarks cover only workers with a deductible. KFF's average general annual deductible is calculated among covered workers who have one (88% of covered workers in 2025); MEPS-IC deductibles are conditional on being enrolled in a plan that had a deductible (88.0% of private-sector enrollees). Neither is an average across all covered workers. Small-firm cells split by plan type rest on small samples and are noisy — the small-firm HMO cell in particular.
• HSA and HRA employer contributions are conditional averages. They cover only workers enrolled in an HSA-qualified HDHP or an HDHP/HRA, and they include employers that contribute $0 (about a third of covered workers for HSAs). They are not per-covered-worker figures and are never added into a total-cost number here. KFF suppresses small-firm HRA contributions for 2025 as not sufficient data.
• Firm-size definition break. KFF's small-firm category is 3–199 workers through the 2024 survey and 10–199 workers from 2025 on; large firms are 200+ throughout. The trend chart marks that step, and the small-firm line is not strictly continuous across it. Firms with fewer than ten workers are outside the 2025 survey universe, so no KFF benchmark exists for them.
• Trend caveats. KFF's own notes report no statistically significant small-vs-large difference in 2019 single premiums; the 2019–2020 drop in family contributions is a real COVID-boundary artifact in the series; the 2020 dip in HMO enrollment is in the published data (KFF states it is unsure why); and plan-type shares can sum to 99–101% because each share is rounded independently, with conventional plans usually published only as “<1%” (left unplotted rather than guessed). Small-firm single premiums running at or above large-firm premiums in recent years is real published data.
• Regions follow the standard Census Bureau four-region grouping (Northeast, Midwest, South, West), which is the grouping KFF publishes. Your state selection sets both your KFF region and your MEPS-IC state benchmark.
• Not published: KFF does not publish deductibles by industry, worker contribution dollars by industry (only percentages), HMO or POS premiums by industry, or HSA/HRA account contributions by region or industry. Those bars are simply omitted rather than estimated.
• Everything you type stays in your browser — comparisons run client-side and nothing is submitted or stored. This tool is informational only and is not insurance, legal, or tax advice.