Source page: McKinsey & Company

Commentary

Visual form

Year-tabbed US county choropleth map.

Layout / body structure

The chart is a county-level map of the United States with year tabs for 2018 and 2022. A legend beneath the map explains the insurer-count color scale and no-data areas.

What is being compared

It compares exchange participation by county, measured as the number of participating health insurers in each county, across 2018 and 2022.

Measurement system

The color scale encodes the count of participating insurers: 1, 2, 3 or 4, at least 5, plus a gray no-data category.

Visible structure inside the graphic

The visible 2018 tab uses light-to-dark blues across counties, with many light counties in the central and eastern United States and darker clusters in parts of the West, Northeast, and selected metro regions.

Main takeaway from the visual

The map shows that county-level insurer choice expanded over the period, with the darker multi-insurer categories becoming more widespread by the later view.

Key standout values or extremes

The legend makes the main extreme explicit: counties with at least five participating insurers are the darkest category, while one-insurer counties are the lightest blue category.

Controls / sequence, when applicable

The year tabs switch the same county map between 2018 and 2022 inside the chart.

Companion media, when applicable

The chart is the full visual on this page. There is no separate companion audio or video outside the visual.


A choice in health matters

Healthcare

September 28, 2022 – Just over half of the counties in America had a single health insurer in 2018. Less than five years later, 94 percent of US counties have more than one health insurance option available to residents. Click through the interactive to see more results from this McKinsey analysis of the individual health insurance market.

To read the article, see “Insights into the 2022 individual health insurance market,” August 3, 2022.

Interactive



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