Massachusetts Employer Survey

Offer Rate and 
Average Monthly Premium
for Single Coverage

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New! Results from the 2024 Massachusetts Employer Survey.

Most Massachusetts residents obtain health insurance through their own or a family member’s employer. Employer-sponsored insurance plays a critical role in shaping the health insurance landscape in the state and impacts the demand for the state’s public insurance programs, including MassHealth.

The Massachusetts Employer Survey (MES) is an ongoing health insurance survey that tracks and monitors employer health insurance offerings, employee take-up rates, cost-sharing, plan characteristics, and employer decision-making. Conducted on a regular basis since 2001, the MES provides valuable insights into the employer health insurance market, including how the landscape of workplace health benefits has shifted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and persistent cost pressures.

The 2024 MES introduced several key updates to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the employer health insurance market in the Commonwealth. These include new analyses of firm contributions to health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) offered in conjunction with high deductible health plans (HDHPs); telemedicine coverage and modality; and the types of services provided by an agent, broker, or consultant during employer benefits decision-making.

Key Findings from the 2024 Massachusetts Employer Survey

• In 2024, 67 percent of firms in Massachusetts offered health insurance, higher than the national rate of 54 percent, but a comparable proportion of employees in firms offering insurance actually enrolled in their employer-sponsored insurance (56 percent and 61 percent, respectively).

• Compared with their national counterparts, the average monthly premium for single coverage was higher in Massachusetts ($789 vs. $746), and employees contributed a larger share of the premium (24 percent vs. 15 percent) with lower average annual deductibles ($1,354 vs. $1,787).

• Among firms offering insurance, 71 percent offered at least one high deductible health plan (HDHP). More than half of small firms (56 percent) and nearly one-third of large firms (31 percent) offered HDHPs exclusively.

• Among firms (34 percent) that offered HDHPs with an accompanying savings option—Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) or Health Savings Account (HSA)—firms contributed an average of $1,916 annually to HRAs and $630 to HSAs for single coverage, and approximately twice that amount ($3,480 and $1,255, respectively) for family coverage.

• Nearly a quarter of firms (23 percent) reported having increased member cost-sharing in the past 12 months to manage rising health insurance costs.