Revised CPS estimates show less high burden medical spending
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Hartman, Lacey, author Fried, Brett, author
- Contributor(s):
- State Health Access Data Assistance Center, University of Minnesota, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [Minneapolis, Minnesota] : State Health Access Data Assistance Center, University of Minnesota, March 2020
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Financing, Personal -- economics Health Expenditures -- statistics & numerical data State Government United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Health care costs in the United States are continuing to rise at unprecedented levels, and with high out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance adding to concerns about affordability of care even with coverage, accurate estimates of financial burden related to medical spending for American individuals and families have become increasingly important. Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau has changed the way medical out-of-pocket expenditures (MOOP) are processed in the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). These changes have important implications for tracking MOOP and related measures of high burden medical spending (spending more than 10 percent of income on premiums, copays, coinsurance, and other cost sharing) over time. In this brief, we examine how use of the new processing system in the CPS ASEC decreased the percent of individuals who are in families (also referred to here as "Health Insurance Units" or "HIUs") with a high medical cost burden from 20.7 percent to 18.9 percent at the national level. This processing system change also had significant impacts at the state level. Six states saw statistically significant decreases in high medical cost burden and substantial changes to states' ranking order from highest to lowest medical cost burden were also revealed, as twelve states shifted their rank by over ten spots. Florida, for example, experienced a dramatic shift in rank from 14th to 34th among states in high burden medical spending when using the new processing system. Scenarios such as this highlight how important it is for analysts and policymakers to understand that apparent improvements in reducing high burden medical spending are the result of technical processing changes and not the direct impact of policy or the economy.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (5 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101772124 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101772124