Healthcare — out-of-pocket
5 NADAC prescription drugs + 2 CMS Physician Fee Schedule CPT codes (office visit, ED visit professional component).
Sources
Precedence ladder for healthcare — out-of-pocket. Lower precedence wins where multiple sources cover the same period. The engine walks the ladder per period with chain-link rescale at source transitions.
| Precedence | Source | Series ID | Cadence | Geography |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | NADAC (CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) | nadac_metformin_hcl_500mg_tablet | weekly (rolled to monthly) | national |
| 0 | NADAC (CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) | nadac_atorvastatin_20mg_tablet | weekly (rolled to monthly) | national |
| 0 | NADAC (CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) | nadac_lisinopril_10mg_tablet | weekly (rolled to monthly) | national |
| 0 | NADAC (CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) | nadac_levothyroxine_50mcg_tablet | weekly (rolled to monthly) | national |
| 0 | NADAC (CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) | nadac_amoxicillin_500mg_capsule | weekly (rolled to monthly) | national |
| 0 | CMS Physician Fee Schedule | cms_pfs_99213_non_facility | annual | national |
| 0 | CMS Physician Fee Schedule | cms_pfs_99283_facility | annual | national |
Weight across archetypes
How healthcare — out-of-pocket is weighted in each of the 10 published archetypes. Sorted by weight, highest first. National Average is the headline citation surface.
| Archetype | Weight | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Retiree | 8.9971% | View archetype → |
| Income — Second Quintile | 4.8616% | View archetype → |
| Income — Lowest Quintile | 4.7600% | View archetype → |
| Homeowner | 4.6484% | View archetype → |
| National Average | 4.0552% | View archetype → |
| Income — Middle Quintile | 4.0235% | View archetype → |
| Income — Fourth Quintile | 4.0096% | View archetype → |
| Income — Highest Quintile | 3.7705% | View archetype → |
| Working Parent | 3.0209% | View archetype → |
| Renter | 2.6257% | View archetype → |
Substitution history
Substitution log entries that touched this stratum. Each entry
bumps the basket version and is reproducible from observations
tagged with their basket_version.
2026-05-29 — Zero-CPI recomposition, chain-linked headline, CPI ingester removed
Version: v1.1.4 → v2.0.0
What changed. Retired BLS CPI from the index entirely and removed its last infrastructure. (1) Five CPI/proxy-dependent strata EXITED and weights renormalized over the surviving 15: household_goods, personal_care, alcohol (pure CPI primaries), food_away (single-chain Big Mac proxy, rejected as non-representative), and tobacco (CPI Tobacco was its only 2020+ path). (2) The last CPI bridge — CUUR0000SEMF01 (Rx CPI) — removed from healthcare_oop, now NADAC (5 generic drugs) + CMS PFS (2 CPT codes) only. (3) shelter_rent moved to Zillow ZORI (2015+) spliced to Census HVS median asking rent (≤2014), and the state healthcare_premium chain-link to BLS CPI SEME was dropped — these SUPERSEDE the v1.1.2 'chain-link to BLS CPI SEME for 2025+' and v1.1.3 'leaving BLS CPI Rent of Primary Residence as sole source' entries below, which describe the now-replaced v1.1.x state. (4) Headline switched to a drift-free fixed-base-within-spans construction, chain-linked only at composition boundaries, so late-starters splice in at entry with no level jump and the index spans the full window. (5) The dormant bls_cpi ingester, its CLI/freshness/reingest wiring, its fixture, and 7,174 inert CUUR rows were deleted from price_observations (local + prod).
Why. The load-bearing commitment is that the index contains NO BLS CPI anywhere — not a primary, not a bridge, not a fallback — because claiming to improve on CPI while still consuming CPI is incoherent. These changes realize it fully: non-CPI share = 100%.
Effect on headline. Published window 2000-01 → 2025-12 (312 months, up from a truncated 2010-2023); long-run decay 3.440%/yr; Dollar Half-Life 20.5 yr; CPI series in index 0; strata count 20 → 15. Price rows remain tagged basket_version=1.0.10 (a weighting + engine-construction change, not a re-ingest); exited strata's rows stay in the store at weight 0 so prior versions remain reconstructable.
Methodology
See the basket page for all 20 strata and the per-stratum source map. The methodology page covers the load-bearing pillars including the rules around source-precedence ladders, chain-link splicing at source transitions, and the no-fabricated-data invariant.