Description
For dental, other medical, office-based, and home health events (EVENTYPE), EVEXPOPR captures the direct payments made by other private insurance sources for care provided during the event. Payments for over-the-counter drugs and indirect payments not related to specific medical events, such as Medicaid Disproportionate Share and Medicare Direct Medical Education subsidies, are not included in this amount. For more information on how MEPS collects expenditure data, please refer to our user note on medical expenditures. The universe for this variable changes over time; please see the universe tab for more details.
This variable was discontinued after the 2018 MEPS sample by the data provider. The MEPS Variable Builder requires that this variable be available, and as such, all cases from 2019 forward have been set to zero. These years should not be used for analysis.
IPUMS MEPS reports the universe for each variable based on a thorough review of the original MEPS documentation. Investigating the data may reveal cases that do not meet the stated universe. Users are encouraged to validate universes for their analyses.
The sum of EVEXPOPRDR and EVEXPOPRFAC (available for emergency room visits, inpatient hospitalization stays, and outpatient visits event types) is equivalent to EVEXPOPR (available for dental, other medical, office-based and home health event types).
AHRQ staff advise users to exercise caution when interpreting the expenditures recorded in EVEXPOPR. While these payments stem from apparent inconsistent responses to the health insurance and source of payment questions in the survey, some of these inconsistencies may have logical explanations. For example, private insurance coverage in MEPS is defined as having a major medical plan covering hospital and physician services. If a MEPS sample person did not have such coverage but had a single service type insurance plan (e.g., dental insurance) that paid for a particular episode of care, those payments may be classified as "other private."
EVEXPOPR is on the event record (see RECTYPE for more details on the different record types in IPUMS MEPS). Variables offered on the event record through IPUMS MEPS are derived from the dental visits, other medical expenses, hospital inpatient stays, emergency room visits, outpatient visits, office-based medical provider visits, and home health event files provided by AHRQ. Please see our overview of the event, medical conditions, and prescribed medicines variables, including how those variables are offered through IPUMS MEPS, and general considerations to keep in mind when conducting analyses using these variables.
EVEXPOPR is a 10-digit numeric variable with 2 implied decimal places. That is, values of 1234567890 should be interpreted as 12,345,678.90. The command files delivered with IPUMS extracts automatically divide by 100, so no further adjustment is needed.
99999999.99: Not in Universe
Universe
- 1996: Office-based medical provider visits, dental visits, other medical expenses, and home health visits (EVENTYPE).
- 1997-1999: Office-based medical provider visits and dental visits (EVENTYPE), other medical expenses where the other medical expense type is not insulin or diabetic equipment/supplies (OMTYPEX), or home health visits where the MPC eligibility flag is not informal care (MPCELIG).
- 2000-2004: Dental visits (EVENTYPE), office-based medical provider visits where the visit was not a telephone call (SEETLKPV), other medical expenses where the other medical expense type is not insulin or diabetic equipment/supplies (OMTYPEX), or home health visits where the MPC eligibility flag is not informal care (MPCELIG).
- 2005-2017: Dental visits and other medical expenses (EVENTYPE), office-based medical provider visits where the visit was not a telephone call (SEETLKPV), or home health visits where the MPC eligibility flag is not informal care (MPCELIG).
- 2018: Office-based medical provider visits, dental visits, and other medical expenses (EVENTYPE) or home health visits where the MPC eligibility flag is not informal care (MPCELIG).
- 2019-2022: This variable was discontinued after the 2018 MEPS sample. The MEPS Variable Builder requires that this variable be available despite not having data. All cases associated with this variable have been set to zero.
Availability
- 1996-2022
Weights
- 1996-2018 : PERWEIGHT
