Description

For sample adults aged 65 and over, COVERTYPE65 reports the persons' health insurance coverage type recoded into a hierarchy. Prior to 2019, COVERTYPE65 was asked of all persons aged 65 and over. COVERTYPE65 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.

In 2015, the health insurance hierarchy for adults aged 65 and over was revised due to an increase in older adults covered by Medicare Advantage plans. This revised mutually exclusive hierarchy (COVERTYPE65) reports private health insurance and Medicare Advantage separately. Those with a report of Medicare Advantage and private coverage are placed in the Medicare Advantage category.

COVERTYPE65 includes six mutually exclusive categories and those with more than one type of health insurance coverage were assigned to the first appropriate category in the following hierarchy:

• Private, includes older persons who have both Medicare and any comprehensive private insurance plan (including health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, and Medi-gap plans). This category also includes older adults with private insurance only.

• Dual eligible (Medicare and Medicaid), includes older persons who do not have any private coverage put have Medicare and Medicaid or other state-sponsored health plans including CHIP.

• Medicare Advantage

• Medicare only excluding Medicare Advantage

• Other coverage, includes older persons who have not been previously classified as having private, Medicare and Medicaid, Medicare Advantage or Medicare only excluding Medicare Advantage. This category also includes older persons who have only Medicaid, other state-sponsored health plans, or CHIP, as well as persons who have any type of military coverage with or without Medicare.

• Uninsured, includes older persons who have not indicated that they are 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 person who are covered by Indian Health Service only or who only have a plan that pays for one type of service such as accidents or dental care.

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