Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS)
Organization
US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
Description
- Longitudinal survey of nationally representative sample of Medicare population (beneficiaries 65 and over as well as beneficiaries with disabilities under 65)
- Designed to explore expenditures and sources of payment for services (co-payments, deductibles, and non-covered services), ascertain all types of health insurance coverage and relate coverage to sources of payment, and trace outcomes over time (health status, Medicaid eligibility, source of care, etc.)
Vintage/Release Frequency
Annual since 2015
Observational Unit
Medicare beneficiary
Collection Methodology
- Three-stage cluster sample design
- Systematic random sampling with probability proportional to the conditional probabilities of selection with independently selection random start within each PSU, stratified by age and ethnicity
- Starting with 2015, beneficiaries eligible for Medicare Part A or B and enrolled anytime during sampling year were eligible for sample
- Hispanic beneficiaries living outside Puerto Rico oversampled
- For each panel sample, respondents are interviewed every 4 months over a 4 year period (maximum of 12 interviews)
User Guide/Data Dictionary
Codebook and User Guide for publicly available files available at same website as data download
Proposal or Application required?
No