Description

For sample adults under the age of 65 and sample children, COVERTYPE reports the persons' health insurance coverage type recoded into a hierarchy. Prior to 2019, COVERTYPE was asked of all persons under the age of 65. COVERTYPE was introduced in 2015 by NCHS to make it easier for the NHIS user to match estimates of health insurance coverage produced by the Division of Health Interview Statistics in annually released products. COVERTYPE includes four mutually exclusive categories and persons with more than one type of health insurance coverage were assigned to the first appropriate category in the following hierarchy:

• Private, including persons who had any comprehensive private insurance plan (including health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, and exchange-based coverage),

• Medicaid and other public, including persons who did not have private coverage, but who have Medicaid or other state-sponsored health plans including CHIP.

• Other coverage, including persons who did not have private insurance, Medicaid, or other public coverage, but who have any type of military coverage or Medicare. This category also included persons who are covered by other government programs.

• Uninsured, including persons who did not indicate that they were covered at the time of the interview under private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, a state-sponsored health plan, other government programs, or military coverage. This category also includes persons who are covered by Indian Health Service only or who have a plan that pays for one type of service such as accidents or dental care.

• COVERTYPE65: health insurance type of persons aged 65+

• COVERTYPE65O: original health insurance type 65+

Comparability

The NHIS questionnaire was substantially redesigned in 2019 to introduce a different data collection structure and new content. For more information on changes in terminology, universes, and data collection methods beginning in 2019, please see the user note.

Universe

Availability

• 2015-2023

Weights

• 2015-2018 : PERWEIGHT
• 2019-2023 : SAMPWEIGHT