Codes and Frequencies
Description
For persons with at least one private health insurance plan, HIP1MDSP indicates whether, for the first plan, the person (or persons in the family covered by the plan) needed referral or approval to seek special care from a different doctor or place. Interviewers instructed respondents not to include emergency care.
Information was collected on up to four plans per family; for 2004 forward, only data for plans one and two are publicly available.
Users may also want to see HIP2MDSP, HIP3MDSP, and HIP4MDSP. In addition, the IPUMS NHIS created the variable HIPMDSPR, which indicates whether the person had any plan which provided a preferred list of doctors at a lower cost.
Persons with three or more plans have a "yes" response to the HIPRIVGT2 variable (available for 2004 forward), which indicates whether persons have more than two private insurance plans. Analysis by IHIS staff indicates that a very small number of persons (less than 0.2 percent of the total number of individuals with private health insurance per year for 2004 to 2009) had three or more private insurance plans. Additional information for the third and fourth plans for a person is available through a Data Research Center.
For all years, respondents who answered the question for HIP1MDSP had private health insurance excluding single service plans, or plans that paid for only type of service.
Data Editing and Recoding
HIP1MDSP is part of a series of follow-up questions for individuals who indicated they had private health insurance.
Not all respondents were accurate in reporting that they had private health insurance. This might be shown, for example, by a mismatch between the verbatim name of an insurance plan and the type of insurance coverage the person selected from the categories on the card. For this reason, the NCHS edited the responses to reassign respondents to the correct category of coverage status. The frequencies provided in HIP1MDSP reflect responses in which private insurance was verified though editing on plan names. Users are strongly encouraged to refer to HIPRIVATEE for more information.
Comparability
This variable is mostly comparable over time.
Information was collected on up to four plans per family; for 2004 forward, only data for plans one and two are publicly available. However, this reduction in the number of plans publicly available does not greatly reduce comparability as very few individuals have more than two private insurance plans. Persons with more than two plans have a "yes" response to the HIPRIVGT2 variable (available for 2004 forward).
Universe
- 1999-2013; 2014: Persons with at least 1 private insurance plan.
Availability
- 1999-2014
Weights
- 1999-2014 : PERWEIGHT
