Research Projects
Research Projects in Health
Medical Large Claims Experience Study
The Medical Large Claims Experience Committee, Committee on Health Benefit Systems Research and
Health Section are pleased to announce the availability of the 1997–1999 Group Medical Insurance Database
and Analysis Report. The database and report were prepared by Kyle Grazier and Bill G’Sell of the University
of Michigan. The database is a follow-up to the 1991–92 Group Medical Large Claims
Database which is also available on the SOA website.
The motivation for the study was to explore and analyze factors affecting incidence rates and the distribution
of claim sizes. The database contains claims from three years: 1997, 1998 and 1999. While the 1991–1992
database focused only “large claims” (i.e., claimants with annual paid charges of at least $25,000),
the 1997–1999 database contains all claimants, regardless of charge amount. Data from seven insurers are
represented. For the three years combined, the database contains 4,294,030 claimants and total paid charges of
approximately $7.1 billion.