Recent and upcoming methodology changes: 2018

Health insurance (posted November 23, 2018)

With the release of September 2018 data, CPI began using new sources to calculate the retained earnings ratio used to compute the commercial insurance portion of the health insurance index. The new sources are the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC). Previously, the CPI used data from A.M. Best, a private source that provides information about and data related to the insurance industry. 

Average prices (posted February 14, 2018)

With April 2018 data, BLS discontinued publication of 33 average price series and introduced 5 new average price series. See tables below for details. 

Physicians' services (updated May 10, 2018)

With the release of April 2018 data, CPI began using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey produced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to adjust the weights of payer types included in the physicians’ services index. The resulting index better reflects current market weights by increasing the share of payments covered by private insurance relative to payments made by uninsured people and payments covered by Medicare Part B. Additional information on this process is available at Measuring Price Change in the CPI: Medical care 

Smartphones (posted March 7, 2018)

With April 2018 data, directed substitution is employed for smartphones in order to bring the CPI sample of smartphones more in line with what consumers are purchasing. Directed substitution is based on statistics on how often consumers upgrade their smartphones and takes place approximately twice a year to coincide with new hardware releases from manufacturers. 

Smartphones (posted January 2, 2018)

With January 2018 data, smartphones, which are part of the telephone hardware, calculators, and other consumer information items index, are quality adjusted to account for the rapid rate of technological advancements and improved quality to customers. Additional information on the process is available at Measuring Price Change in the CPI: Telephone hardware, calculators, and other consumer information items. 

For archived recent and upcoming methodology changes since 2017, see the recent and upcoming methodology change notice archive.

Last Modified Date: August 25, 2022