October 2026 | Joel Cantor, Derek DeLia, Bingxiao Wu, Lindsay Shea | Achieving Affordable Health Care in New Jersey Requires Better Data: Other States are Well Ahead
As a state with a well-educated and high-income population, we should expect New Jersey to have a high-performing healthcare delivery system. In some ways we do. Our average life expectancy is high and we have a lower-than-average uninsured rate (although it is expected to increase substantially under the 2025 reconciliation act and Trump administration policy).
But in other important ways, our health sector for the state seriously underperforms. Governor Sherrill got to the crux of the problem in her 2027 Budget Address: “[healthcare] costs in New Jersey are among the nation’s highest, and that affects everything: families, businesses, schools, property taxes, the state budget.” Healthcare is a major contributor to New Jersey’s affordability problem.
Available data reveal the depth of the problem. Compared to other states, New Jersey has the 10th-highest healthcare spending per resident, and we rank near the bottom (41st) in the rate of costly but preventable hospitalizations. We also face gaps in access to basic care that is essential to prevent hospitalization and achieve good health. Vividly illustrating this point is our rank in the supply of primary care providers available to our population, where New Jersey places 46th.
Data describing individual components of system underperformance are not enough. New Jersey deserves a comprehensive and transparent data infrastructure that can drive solutions. Data sources available in New Jersey today are siloed and insufficient to actively track drivers of rising healthcare cost, identify patterns of costly low-value and even harmful care, and support development of policy solutions.