Description
For all persons, VSEXPOPR captures the sum of direct payments made during the year by other private sources for the purchase of glasses and/or contact lenses.
AHRQ staff advises users to exercise caution when interpreting the expenditures recorded in VSEXPOPR. 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." For more information on how MEPS collects expenditure data, please refer to our user note on medical expenditures.
Due to the data collection methodology, it was not possible to determine whether vision items that were reported in Round 3 had been purchased in the first or second year of the longitudinal panel. Therefore, expenses reported in Round 3 were only included in the annual file for a given year if more than half of the person's reference period for the round took place in that year.
Variables related to total annual health care expenditures by source of payment, total annual health care expenditures by type of medical service, and total annual health care charges are also available. Please refer to our user note on expenditures for a list of these variables.
VSEXPOPR is a 6-digit numeric variable.
Universe
- 1996-2018: All persons.
Availability
- 1996-2018
Weights
- 1996-2018 : PERWEIGHT
