Health Stats Healthcare Premium Increases: Summary Statistics and Explanations

A recent survey asked forty respondents how much of a monthly premium increase they could/would absorb before leaving their current healthcare plan. The sample responses are given as:

The mean of this sample is 47.23, with a standard deviation of 10.05. Assuming a normal distribution, the maximized level of retention with an increase in premiums would not necessarily occur at the mean itself. Moving one standard deviation to the left -- i.e. decreasing the premium increase by $10.05 to $37.18 -- would incorporate an additional 34.1% of the population (again assuming...

Exact estimations regarding the profitability of various options cannot be given without knowledge of current premium rates and total population size, however it is likely that a premium increase below the observed mean in this population would be most beneficial to the company in terms of minimizing risks and maximizing revenue.
When determining a confidence interval for this sample/population, it is necessary to remember that the interval must be one sided. Everyone to the right of a given vertical line on the distribution will be included in the result, while everyone to the left would be excluded. The vertical line represents a…