Description

For all persons, COVTYPEAGE reports the person's health insurance recoded into a hierarchy with mutually exclusive categories based on coverage type and age. COVTYPEAGE is constructed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) from other annual health insurance variables and age as a convenience to users who wish to replicate published tables on health insurance coverage type by age.

The treatment of health insurance coverage type by COVTYPEAGE differs from other MEPS health insurance coverage type variables. For the purposes of coverage type classification in COVTYPEAGE, TRICARE/CHAMPVA is treated as private health insurance coverage. COVERTYPE also considers TRICARE/CHAMPVA to be private health insurance coverage. However, in all other MEPS annual health insurance variables, TRICARE is classified as public coverage. For users who wish to treat TRICARE as public coverage, it is possible to reconstruct COVTYPEAGE using HIPRIVATE and HICHAMPANY. Additionally, Medicare coverage was determined using the edited version of Medicare reported in HIMCARE.

COVTYPEAGE includes EIGHT mutually exclusive categories and those with more than one type of health insurance coverage were assigned to the first appropriate category in the following hierarchy:

• Any Private (0-64): The person is between ages 0 and 64 and is covered by private insurance or TRICARE/CHAMPVA at any time during the calendar year. Note that persons under age 65 with both private insurance or TRICARE/CHAMPVA and a source of public coverage will be coded as "Any Private."

• Public Only (0-64): The person is between ages 0 and 64 and was covered only by public insurance during the calendar year.

• Uninsured (0-64): The person is between ages 0 and 64 and was uninsured for the entire calendar year.

• Medicare Only (65+): The person is 65 years of age or older and was covered only by Medicare during the calendar year.

• Medicare and Private (65+): The person is 65 years of age or older and was covered by Medicare and private insurance or TRICARE/CHAMPVA during the calendar year.

• Medicare and Other Public (65+): The person is 65 years of age or older and was covered by Medicare and another source of public health insurance coverage (Medicaid/SCHIP, Other Government (type A), or Other Government (type B) during the calendar year).

• Uninsured (65+): The person is 65 years of age or older and had no source of health insurance coverage during the calendar year.

• No Medicare but Any Private and/or Public (65+): The person is 65 years of age or older and was not covered by Medicare but did have another private or non-Medicare public source of health insurance coverage during the calendar year.

• COVERTYPE: Health insurance coverage type (hierarchy)

Comparability

COVTYPEAGE was introduced in 2011. When it was first introduced, COVTYPEAGE had seven categories. The first six were identical to what is described in the main variable description, but the seventh category was simply "No Medicare," and grouped uninsured adults 65 years of age and older with adults 65 years of age and older who had private and/or other non-Medicare public sources of health care coverage. Beginning in 2012, that seventh category was split into two: uninsured adults aged 65 and older and adults aged 65 and older with no Medicare coverage but with private or other public coverage.

Universe

Availability

• 2011-2021

Weights

• 2011-2021 : PERWEIGHT

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