Assessing the need for a new household panel study: Health insurance and health care
Issue title: Assessing the need for a new nationally representative household
panel survey in the United States
Subtitle:
Guest editors: Robert Moffitt, Robert F. Schoeni, Charles Brown, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Mick P. Couper, Ana V. Diez-Roux, Erik Hurst and Judith A. Seltzer
Affiliations: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104, USA. Tel.: +1 734 936 4506; Fax: +1 734 647 1186; E-mail: hlevy@umich.edu
Abstract: This paper considers the availability of data for
addressing questions related to health insurance and health care and the
potential contribution of a new household panel study. The paper begins by
outlining some of the major questions related to policy and concludes that
survey data on health insurance, access to care, health spending, and
overall economic well-being will likely be needed to answer them. The paper
considers the strengths and weaknesses of existing sources of survey data
for answering these questions. The paper concludes that either a new
national panel study, an expansion in the age range of subjects in existing
panel studies, or a set of smaller changes to existing panel and
cross-sectional surveys, would significantly enhance our understanding of
the dynamics of health insurance, access to health care, and economic
well-being.
Keywords: Survey data, longitudinal studies, health insurance, access to care, health reform
