Webinar: Measuring Health Insurance Coverage: Improvements and New Opportunities in the Current Population Survey

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Wednesday, September 17, 2014, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. EDT

Overview: This webinar was presented by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) initiative.

The Current Population Survey (CPS), a household survey conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is a primary source of economic and labor market data for the U.S. population. Because CPS’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) has collected data about health insurance coverage every year since the 1980s, the CPS has become a rich resource for health services researchers tracking coverage trends. Beginning with the 2014 ASEC (which is administered in February, March and April of 2014 and asks questions about coverage during the calendar year 2013), the Census Bureau implemented a redesign of the health insurance questions to provide more precise measures of coverage. Among other changes, the new method captures current health insurance coverage in addition to coverage on a monthly basis since the beginning of the previous calendar year. The Census Bureau released estimates from the redesigned survey in September 2014.

This free webinar discussed the use of the CPS for applied policy research and explored the survey redesign. Both new and experienced researchers were encouraged to register. Kathleen Adams, Emory University and Patricia Ketsche, Georgia State University, discussed how they used the CPS in their current HCFO-funded project and the issues the survey redesign raised for this type of research. Following their presentation, Joanne Pascale from the U.S. Census Bureau provided an overview of the CPS, explained the changes in detail, and discussed both the opportunities the redesign created for researchers and potential solutions to the challenges it posed. The speakers responded to the participants’ questions during the final 30 minutes of the webinar.

This presentation is intended to be a professional resource. Please note that some of the slides are pre-publication and are not intended for distribution or citation.

Faculty:

• Michael Gluck, Ph.D., M.P.P. AcademyHealth (moderator)
• Joanne Pascale, M.A., Census Bureau
• E. Kathleen Adams, Ph.D., Emory University
• Patricia Ketsche, Ph.D., M.B.A., M.H.A., Georgia State University