Abstract
The widely cited Census Bureau estimates of the number of uninsured people, based on the Current Population Survey, probably overstate the number of uninsured people. This is because of a Medicaid “undercount”: Fewer people report to survey takers that they’re covered by Medicaid than program administrative data show are enrolled. Our study finds that the undercount can be explained by the inability of people to recall their insurance status accurately from the previous year. We suggest that other data sources, such as Census’s American Community Survey, should be studied to determine whether they would provide better estimates of the uninsured.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | w991-w1001 |
Journal | Health Affairs |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 10 2009 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This paper was made possible by the careful data work of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, by Grant no. 052084 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC; Michael Davern, principal investigator), and by internal funding from Abt Associates. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Abt Associates, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, SHADAC, RAND, or the Urban Institute.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2009 Project HOPE–The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.