Healthcare costs are typically going up every year, but patients in some states are paying much more.
To rank states and give each an overall score, researchers at Blue Goat Cyber, which provides medical device cybersecurity, compiled data on costs for insurance plans, emergency room visits, employer insurance, deductibles, the percentage of adults skipping doctors due to costs and percentage of children whose families struggle to pay medical bills.
The information is largely up-to-date for 2024, except data on average annual employee-plus-one premiums and the percentage of children whose families had trouble paying medical bills are from 2023.
HealthCare.gov, the State Health Access Data Assistance Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation are the sources for the analysis.
These are the five states with the highest scores, representing the top overall healthcare costs:
- Alaska (66)
- Vermont (61.73)
- South Dakota (59.78)
- Wyoming (59.62)
- West Virginia (58.49)
These are the five states with the lowest scores, meaning the smallest healthcare costs:
- Maryland (19.47)
- Arkansas (22.97)
- Kansas (25)
- Michigan (25.07)
- Idaho (25.28)
What is driving healthcare costs by state?
Many factors influence what people pay for healthcare from one state to the next, including competition between insurers and doctors, government programs and household incomes determining what patients can afford.
In the case of Alaska, the highest-scored state for healthcare costs, it has the biggest average annual costs for employee-plus-one coverage at $16,892, the second-highest silver plan monthly premiums at $870 and the tenth-highest emergency room visit costs at $2,265.
Alaska has the fastest growing and top healthcare costs in the nation because of the state's small population and isolation from other markets, people living in remote areas, limited doctors with little competition and high profit margins for hospitals in urban areas, among other reasons, according to nonprofit Alaska Common Ground.
For Vermont, the second-highest scored state, it has the top average silver premiums at $948 and ranks fifth for annual employee-plus-one coverage at $16,500.
Health insurance costs are higher in Vermont in large part because its government boosts the prices of silver plans to grow the pool of tax credits, but small businesses, unlike individuals, don't have access to subsidies for their employees' health plans, state news outlet Vermont Digger reported.
On the other hand, there may be lessons to learn from states with lower healthcare costs.
Maryland, which ranks the best for healthcare costs, has the lowest emergency room visit charges at $682, silver premium plans are the third lowest in the nation at $342 and deductibles are also favorable: Single deductibles are the fourth lowest at $1,714 and family deductibles are the eighth lowest at $3,382.
The state's unique model has driven down costs by providing hospitals with a guaranteed stream of revenue for the upcoming year, including new investments in primary care and government incentives for hospitals to keep prices lower, according to data-analytics company Mathematica.
Arkansas which ranks the second-least-expensive state and is nearly tied with Kansas, has the fourth lowest average family deductible at $3,262, the 11th lowest emergency room visit costs at $1,427 and 14th lowest average silver insurance premium at $424.
Despite having poor health outcomes for patients, Arkansas has kept costs lower compared to other states in part because of lower incomes that qualify people for government aid and rates on its marketplace that have remained fairly steady due to Medicaid expansion, according to nonprofit Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
