This public use data file is one in a series of event-level public use data files drawn from the 2018 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, this public use file provides information on the purchase of and expenditures for medical equipment, supplies, glasses and other medical items for a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of the utilization and expenditures associated with medical items during the 2018 calendar year. This file consists of 2018 data obtained in the 2018 portion of round 3, and rounds 4 and 5 for Panel 22, as well as rounds 1, 2, and the 2018 portion of round 3 for Panel 23 of the survey (i.e., the rounds for the MEPS panels covering calendar year 2018).
Starting in 2018, instead of the XPORT engine, the CPORT procedure is used to create MEPS Public Use Files (PUFS)
in transport format (excluding the 2018 Point-in-Time file, HC-036, and HC-036BRR). These CPORT data files
(.ssp) cannot be read directly into R or Stata at this time. The ASCII (.dat) data file format can be used
instead, along with the corresponding instructions found in the 'Programming Statements' files. In addition,
SAS users must use the CIMPORT procedure to restore the transport files (.ssp) into SAS data sets. For more
details on loading MEPS PUFs into R, SAS, and Stata, please visit the
MEPS GitHub page. Update notes
*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.
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