Rollins College

Description

This project creates three data sets that examine access to health care in the United States. The files contain information about employers/firms, health care plans, and health insurance families. These data sets contain selected variables from the "Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Employer Health Insurance Survey, 1993" that was used in the preparation of President Clinton's universal health care bill.

The first file (Firms) contains information about the characteristics of employers and workers in establishments offering and not offering health insurance, the number of employees, characteristics of workers (such as age, sex, earnings, hours worked), type of industry or business, and whether or not the health insurance was offered. The second file (Plans) includes information about the characteristics of plans offered (coverage, premiums, prescription drug coverage, etc.). The third data set (Families) contains information about family access to health care. Variables on health insurance coverage include the types of coverage respondents had (i.e., Medicare, Medicaid, private policies), premiums, and the number of months uninsured during the last year. Access to health care is measured by variables such as the type of health care provider, the amount of time it took to get to the doctor's office, and whether needed medical care was received during the previous year. Variables on the utilization of health care include the number of overnight hospital stays, the number of visits to doctors, age at first DPT shot, oral polio immunization, and the number of months passed since the most recent breast exam and Pap smear. There also are variables of the respondent's self-reported health status, opinions on the health care system, satisfaction/dissatisfaction with health services received, employment, income, education, sex, marital status, race, Hispanic origin.

(The complete studies are available from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, study numbers 6894 and 6908, or from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

These data sets can be used for instruction in classes in quantitative analysis/reasoning, public policy analysis, or for substantive research in health care policy. Instructional supplements will soon be available.

The files are currently available as STATA data sets (compressed) or in ascii (plain text, space delimited). The files are available for FTP transfer or on zip disk. Plain text codebook is available.

STATA file sizes:

Family 11KB

Plans 4KB

Firms 2KB