In 2014, about half of children (ages 18 and younger) in the United States were covered by employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) at some point during the year. Their numbers underscore the importance of understanding trends in health care spending for these children and their use of medical services. This report, Children's Health Spending: 2010-2014, is the fourth in a series of annual reports from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) on trends in spending, utilization, and price for children's health care. For this study, we analyzed a population that averaged 10.2 million ESI children per year between 2010 and 2014, the "study period" (see "About the Data and Methodology"). The analytic dataset was weighted to be representative of the national population of children covered by ESI. As in previous studies, HCCI examined the per capita health care spending and the drivers of health care costs for this population of children. This report proceeds in six sections. The first section describes the trends for all children (ages 0-18) as a group. Sections two through five examine the health care trends for each of the children's age groups: infants and toddlers (ages 0-3), also called "babies"; younger children (ages 4-8); preteens (ages 9-13); and teenagers (ages 14-18), also called "teens". The final section in this report is new to HCCI Children's Health Spending reports, and details the high-level spending per capita and out-of-pocket spending per capita trends in ten selected states (which includes the District of Columbia, here referred to as a "state"). Additionally, spending for each state is compared to the national average and interesting trends in children's health care are explored.
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