Medicaid provides health coverage to millions of Americans, including children, pregnant women, parents, seniors and individuals with disabilities. In some states the program covers all low-income adults below a certain income level.

Governor's Goal that more Pennsylvanians should have access to primary and preventative care, be able to see a doctor when they are sick, and avoid costly trips to the emergency room. Increased health care access leads to better health outcomes, which are essential to a productive workforce and a thriving economy. When more Pennsylvanians have access to preventative health services, state-supported health care costs go down.

Governor's Goal - The opioid crisis is a public health emergency in Pennsylvania that is contributing to addiction, overdose emergencies, and deaths. The crisis is unprejudiced in its reach and devastation, impacting all areas of the state – including urban, suburban, and rural communities – and Pennsylvanians of all ages. However, Pennsylvania's experience shows that, with a proactive response, it is possible to prevent substance use disorders, increase access to treatment, and rescue those in dire need.

When Governor Tom Wolf expanded Medicaid in 2015, more Pennsylvanians than ever were able to access quality health care coverage. The expansion opened up Medicaid to even more people living on low incomes, people who had been diagnosed with substance use disorder, and others.

This data is pulled from the U.S. Census website. This data is for years Calendar Years 2009-2014.
Product: SAHIE File Layout Overview
Small Area Health Insurance Estimates Program - SAHIE
Filenames: SAHIE Text and SAHIE CSV files 2009 – 2014
Source: Small Area Health Insurance Estimates Program, U.S. Census Bureau.
Internet Release Date: May 2016
Description: Model‐based Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE) for Counties and States File Layout and Definitions

The Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE) program was created to develop model-based estimates of health insurance coverage for counties and states. This program builds on the work of the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program. SAHIE is only source of single-year health insurance coverage estimates for all U.S. counties.

For 2008-2014, SAHIE publishes STATE and COUNTY estimates of population with and without health insurance coverage, along with measures of uncertainty, for the full cross-classification of:
•5 age categories: 0-64, 18-64, 21-64, 40-64, and 50-64

•3 sex categories: both sexes, male, and female

•6 income categories: all incomes, as well as income-to-poverty ratio (IPR) categories 0-138%, 0-200%, 0-250%, 0-400%, and 138-400% of the poverty threshold

•4 races/ethnicities (for states only): all races/ethnicities, White not Hispanic, Black not Hispanic, and Hispanic (any race).

In addition, estimates for age category 0-18 by the income categories listed above are published.

Each year’s estimates are adjusted so that, before rounding, the county estimates sum to their respective state totals and for key demographics the state estimates sum to the national ACS numbers insured and uninsured.

This program is partially funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC), National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection ProgramLink to a non-federal Web site (NBCCEDP). The CDC have a congressional mandate to provide screening services for breast and cervical cancer to low-income, uninsured, and underserved women through the NBCCEDP. Most state NBCCEDP programs define low-income as 200 or 250 percent of the poverty threshold. Also included are IPR categories relevant to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In 2014, the ACA will help families gain access to health care by allowing Medicaid to cover families with incomes less than or equal to 138 percent of the poverty line. Families with incomes above the level needed to qualify for Medicaid, but less than or equal to 400 percent of the poverty line can receive tax credits that will help them pay for health coverage in the new health insurance exchanges.

We welcome your feedback as we continue to research and improve our estimation methods. The SAHIE program's age model methodology and estimates have undergone internal U.S. Census Bureau review as well as external review. See the SAHIE Methodological Review page for more details and a summary of the comments and our response.

The SAHIE program models health insurance coverage by combining survey data from several sources, including:
•The American Community Survey (ACS)
•Demographic population estimates
•Aggregated federal tax returns
•Participation records for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp program
•County Business Patterns
•Medicaid
•Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) participation records
•Census 2010

Margin of error (MOE). Some ACS products provide
an MOE instead of confidence intervals. An MOE is the
difference between an estimate and its upper or lower
confidence bounds. Confidence bounds can be created
by adding the margin of error to the estimate (for the
upper bound) and subtracting the margin of error from
the estimate (for the lower bound). All published ACS
margins of error are based on a 90-percent confidence
level.

The Department of Human Services is focused on improving access to health care in Pennsylvania while reducing Medicaid spending. DHS has begun to reward health care providers for the quality of their care, focus on preventive screenings, and work to limit costly and sometimes unnecessary services, such as an overuse of emergency rooms.

The American Community Survey (ACS) helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. It is the premier source for detailed population and housing information about our nation. This dataset provides estimates by county for Health Insurance Coverage and is summarized from summary table S2701: SELECTED CHARACTERISTICS OF HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE IN THE UNITED STATES. The 5-year estimates are used to provide detail on every county in Pennsylvania and includes breakouts by Age, Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Household Income, and the Ratio of Income to Poverty.

An blank cell within the dataset indicates that either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute the statistic for that area.

Margin of error (MOE). Some ACS products provide an MOE instead of confidence intervals. An MOE is the difference between an estimate and its upper or lower confidence bounds. Confidence bounds can be created by adding the margin of error to the estimate (for the upper bound) and subtracting the margin of error from the estimate (for the lower bound). All published ACS margins of error are based on a 90-percent confidence level.

While an ACS 1-year estimate includes information collected over a 12-month period, an ACS 5-year estimate includes data collected over a 60-month period. In the case of ACS 1-year estimates, the period is the calendar year (e.g., the 2015 ACS covers the period from January 2015 through December 2015).

In the case of ACS multiyear estimates, the period is 5 calendar years (e.g., the 2011–2015 ACS estimates cover the period from January 2011 through December 2015). Therefore, ACS estimates based on data collected from 2011–2015 should not be labeled “2013,” even though that is the midpoint of the 5-year period.

Multiyear estimates should be labeled to indicate clearly the full period of time (e.g., “The child poverty rate in 2011–2015 was X percent.”). They do not describe any specific day, month, or year within that time period.

Persons enrolled in Medical Assistance (Medicaid) for a given month. Includes Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), General Assistance (GA), Disabled, & Waiver categories.

This dataset summarizes the number of dependent children (less than 18 years old) removed from households due to parental drug abuse. The data indicates if the dependent children were placed in kinship care or not.
The total number of children in this data set are provided by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), which publishes 5 year estimates of the population. The most recent year of entries in this data set may be available before the corresponding ACS population estimates for that year are published. In that case, the data set uses values from the most recently published ACS estimates and notes the year from which those estimates are pulled. These values are updated once the Census Bureau releases the most recent estimates.”
*Kinship care refers to the care of children by relatives or, in some jurisdictions, close family friends (often referred to as fictive kin). Relatives are the preferred resource for children who must be removed from their birth parents because it maintains the children's connections with their families.
*The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) definition of parental drug abuse is “Principal caretaker’s compulsive use of drugs that is not of a temporary nature.”

This data is pulled from the U.S. Census website. This data is for years 2009-2014.
Product: SAHIE File Layout Overview
Filenames: SAHIE Text and SAHIE CSV files 2009 – 2014
Source: Small Area Health Insurance Estimates Program, U.S. Census Bureau.
Internet Release Date: May 2016
Description: Model‐based Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE) for Counties and States File Layout and Definitions