This file is one in a series of public use event files from the 2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS HC) and Medical Provider Component (MPC). Released as an ASCII data file, a SAS transport file, a SAS V9 file, a XLSX file, and a Stata file (with SAS, STATA, SPSS, and R user statements), this public use file provides detailed information on household-reported prescribed medicines for a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of prescribed medicine utilization and expenditures for calendar year 2020. Each record represents one household-reported prescribed medicine that was purchased during calendar year 2020. These data were collected in Rounds 6-7 for Panel 23, Rounds 3-5 for Panel 24, and Rounds 1-3 for Panel 25 (i.e., the rounds for the MEPS panels covering calendar year 2020). This year, 2020, is the first data year to include three panels of data; Panel 23 was extended to include Rounds 6 and 7. Each record on this event file represents a unique prescribed medicine event; that is, a prescribed medicine reported as being purchased or otherwise obtained by the household respondent, and includes the following: an identifier for each unique prescribed medicine; detailed characteristics associated with the event (e.g., national drug code (NDC), medicine name, etc.); selected Multum Lexicon variables; the date on which the person first used the medicine; total expenditure and sources of payments; types of pharmacies that filled the household's prescriptions; and a full-year person level weight.
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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