Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Public Use File Details

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MEPS HC-229C: 2021 Other Medical Expenses File

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Release date: May 2023

	Notes on viewing and downloading files
	Printing tips

This public use data file is one in a series of event-level public use data files drawn from the 2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) Household Component (HC). Released as an ASCII file with SAS, SPSS, STATA, and R programming statements a SAS transport file, a SAS V9 file, a XLSX file, and a Stata file, the Other Medical Expenses file provides information on the purchases of and expenditures for visual aids, medical equipment, supplies, and other medical items during the 2021 calendar year for a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States. It contains one record for each type of medical item reported as being purchased or otherwise obtained by a household member during the specified reference period. This file consists of MEPS survey data obtained in the 2021 portion of Round 7, and all of Rounds 8 and 9 for Panel 23; the 2021 portion of Rounds 5 and 7, and all of Round 6 for Panel 24; the 2021 portion of Round 3 and all of Rounds 4 and 5 for Panel 25; and Rounds 1, 2, and the 2021 portion of Round 3 for Panel 26 (i.e., the rounds for the MEPS panels covering the calendar year 2021). This year, 2021, is the first data year to include four panels of data. Because of concerns about lower response rates due to COVID-19, Panels 23 and 24 were extended to include 9 rounds of data collection; data for Rounds 7, 8, and 9 for Panel 23 and Rounds 5, 6, and 7 for Panel 24 are included in the 2021 data files. Data from this event file can be merged with other 2021 MEPS HC data files to append person-level data, such as demographic characteristics or health insurance coverage, to each Other Medical record. This file can also be used to construct summary variables of expenditures, source of payment, and related aspects of the purchase of medical items. For more details on loading MEPS PUFs into R, SAS, and Stata, please visit the MEPS GitHub page

Documentation

File type

Documentation	PDF (207 KB) / HTML
Codebook	PDF (93 KB) / HTML*
SAS Programming Statements	TXT (30 KB)
SPSS Programming Statements	TXT (5.1 KB)
STATA Programming Statements	TXT (7.6 KB)
R Programming Statements	TXT (7.6 KB)

Data	File type**

Data File, ASCII format

ZIP (253 KB)

Data File, SAS transport format

ZIP (348 KB)

Data File, SAS V9 format

ZIP (361 KB)

Data File, Stata format

ZIP (318 KB)

Data File, XLSX format

ZIP (993 KB)

Questionnaires — see Survey Questionnaires
The PDF version of the codebook is recommended for printing; the HTML version is database driven and lets you navigate quickly to details on each variable. *Right-click on the data file link, then select Save Target As or Save Link As to download the file.