Because health care is a local service and the availability of affordable, quality health insurance differs greatly from state to state, the AHIRC database is accessed by selecting [clicking on] the state or district you are interested in from the map below. Before moving to a state's main page, however, you may want to scroll down to read about this site.

The AHIRC database was created in 1998 by The Actors’ Fund of America, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as a health insurance resource for artists and people in the entertainment industry.  Since then, with support from The Commonwealth Fund, it has expanded to include resources for the self-employed, low-income workers, the under-insured, the uninsured who require medical care and many other groups.

With the most recent grant from The Commonwealth Fund, six graduate students, mentored by public health policy analysts and coordinated by an Actors' Fund staff member, are currently participating in a year-long program to research additional resources and add them to the AHIRC website.  The participating universities are:

University of Southern Maine, Institute for Health Policy, Edward S. Muskie School of Public Service; Rutgers University, Center for State Health Policy; University of Washington, Health Policy Analysis Program, School of Public Health and Community Medicine; University of Nebraska Medical Center, Health Services Research and Rural Health Policy; Georgia State University, Georgia Health Policy Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies; Michigan Public Health Institute, Center for Collaborative Research in Health Outcomes and Policy

You can help us in this effort to establish a central, reliable and comprehensive source of health insurance and health access information, available to everyone without charge, by submitting additional resources and reporting on current listings in the boxes located in the lower right column on each state’s main page.  

“Understanding is knowledge adequate to your intentions.”  - Immanuel Kant