MEPS HC-127: 2009 Person Round Plan Public Use File

Update #2: 11/22/13

STATA Programming Statements have been added.

Update #1: 04/24/12

The value of COVTYPIN (single or family coverage) was incorrectly set for a small number of plans. These cases have all four of the following conditions: (1) every coresiding family member’s coverage ceased before the end of the reference period (interview date or December 31st, so that EVALCOVR≠1), (2) the policyholder was a coresiding family member, (3) the plan did not cover anyone residing elsewhere, and (4) at least one coresiding dependent had coverage during the reference period. In these cases, COVTYPIN was erroneously set to single. Beginning in 2010, if coverage ceased for every coresiding family member before the end of the reference period, COVTYPIN is set to family if there were two or more persons covered any time during the reference period. Users can reset the values for these cases in prior years with the available data. An example in SAS follows:

proc sort data=h127 out=prpl;
by eprsidx;
run;
data eprs(keep=eprsidx numin numever);
set prpl;
by eprsidx;
retain numin numever;
array stat{24} status1-status24;
if first.eprsidx then do; numin=0; numever=0; end;
if substr(dupersid,6,3) ne '901' then do;
do i=1 to 24; if stat{i}=1 then covered=1; end;
if covered=1 then numever=numever+1;
if evalcovr=1 then numin=numin+1;
end;
if last.eprsidx then output eprs;
run;
data prplx(drop=numin numever covtypin rename=(covtypix=covtypin));
merge prpl eprs;
by eprsidx;
if numin=0 and covtypin=1 and numever>1 then covtypix=2;
else covtypix=covtypin;
label covtypix='COVERAGE: 1=SINGLE, 2=FAMILY';
run;