Bay Area Health Task Force Small Employers' Health Insurance Helpline Database, 1989-1992

The mission of the Bay Area Health Task Force (BAHTF) was to address the issues and problems of the growing number of people who were uninsured for health care. With the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, BAHTF established the Health Insurance Helpline, which provided health insurance information and referrals for small businesses. This data collection was produced in order to evaluate this Helpline. The data collection consists of four sets of data, one from each year that the Helpline service was offered (1989 through 1992). The unit of analysis is calls received by the Helpline, which were categorized by the type of caller (business, individual, other) and type of service received (broker referral, guidebook only, other). Callers were generally categorized as insured businesses, uninsured businesses, insured individuals, or uninsured individuals. (The category "other" was left for callers who could not be clearly classified as business or individual callers.) A follow-up was conducted for over a quarter of the callers to obtain feedback about the program. Callers provided information concerning their reason for calling, the number of employees they had working full-time, the nature of their business firm, whether the business firm offered health insurance, and which plan they offered.