This public use file is one in a series of data files drawn from the 2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) Household Component (HC). Released as an ASCII file (with related SAS, SPSS, Stata, and R programming statements), a SAS transport file, a SAS V9 file, a Stata file, and an Excel file, the 2021 Person Round Plan (PRPL) file contains records for persons insured through private establishments providing hospital/physician, medigap, dental, vision, or prescription medication coverage during calendar year 2021. These data are designed to facilitate research on the sometimes complex and dynamic relationships between consumers and their private insurance. Each record comprises data for a unique combination of insurance establishment, policyholder, interview round, insurance plan, and covered person. This public use data file contains data for each person with private health insurance reported in Rounds 7, 8, and 9 of Panel 23, Rounds 5, 6, and 7 of Panel 24, Rounds 3, 4, and 5 of Panel 25, and Rounds 1, 2, and 3 of Panel 26 (i.e., the rounds for the survey panels covering calendar year 2021) of the MEPS HC. 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. Because the PRPL file is not a person-level file, linking it to the 2021 Full-Year Consolidated File (HC-233) requires users to make analytic decisions that reflect an understanding of the PRPL file's complexity.
For more details on loading MEPS PUFs into R, SAS, and Stata, please visit the MEPS GitHub page.
*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.