Out-of-Pocket Expenditures on Health Care among the Nonelderly Population, 2004. MEPS Statistical Brief No. 159

摘要

Health care costs continue to rise faster than the overall rate of inflation and are consuming a larger share of family budgets. By 2003, there were 48.8 million individuals living in families who spent more than 10 percent of family income on medical care, an increase of 11.7 million persons since 1996. Using data from the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC), this Statistical Brief presents data on out-of-pocket health care expenditures among nonelderly individuals (age below 65) in 2004, and examines how out-of-pocket spending varies by health insurance status, poverty status, and age. The distribution of health care expenditures is highly skewed (i.e., a small proportion of persons have extremely large expenses); as a consequence, the emphasis of this analysis is on the expenditure distribution. All differences between estimates discussed in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level.