Do National Surveys Overestimate The Number of Uninsured? Findings From The Medicaid Undercount Experiment in Minnesota

Translating Research to Policy
January 2004/Issue 9
Do National Surveys Overestimate the Number

of Uninsured? Findings from the Medicaid
Undercount Experiment in Minnesota
OVERVIEW
General population surveys of health
insurance coverage provide timely estimates
of uninsurance. These estimates inform
resource allocation and policy decisions
made by Federal and state lawmakers trying
to make health insurance more accessible
and affordable. Policymakers and analysts
use survey estimates of coverage and lack of
coverage to monitor the dynamics of health
insurance markets, evaluate the success of
current programs in reaching target
populations, and assess the costs and
benefits of program changes, outreach
activities, and other coverage initiatives.
These survey estimates are also used in
federal formulas that allocate billions of
dollars annually to states for the State
Childrens Health Insurance Program
(SCHIP). With these factors in mind, the
importance of obtaining accurate estimates
of the number of people lacking insurance
becomes clear.
One area of ongoing concern to researchers
is that general population surveys like the
Current Population Survey (CPS)
systematically underestimate the number of
individuals known through administrative
records to be enrolled in Medicaid
programs. This discrepancy between survey
and administrative counts of Medicaid
enrollmentor the Medicaid
undercountis problematic, not in and
of itself, but to the extent that it is thought
to cause upward bias in survey estimates

of the number of uninsured. When survey
estimates of Medicaid enrollment do not
match administrative data counts, the
discrepancy raises concerns about other
estimates produced by the survey.
General population surveys are the only
source of estimates on the number of people
covered by private insurance, those who are
uninsured, and those who are uninsured but
eligible for public programs. This SHADAC
issue brief summarizes our recent study of
the Medicaid undercount in Minnesota.
EXPLAINING THE MEDICAID

UNDERCOUNT
Comparisons of survey estimates of
Medicaid participation to Medicaid
administrative data indicate that anywhere
from 15 to 50 percent of Medicaid cases are
missed by national population surveys such
as the Current Population Survey (CPS),
the Survey of Income and Program
Participation, and the Community Tracking
Study.1 One might infer from these results
that some portion of Medicaid recipients
do not report their Medicaid coverage in
surveys asking about health insurance
coverage.
Medicaid enrollees might provide inaccurate
responses to survey questions addressing
insurance coverage for a number of reasons.
Some Medicaid recipients may be confused
1
See Lewis, K., M. Ellwood, and J.L. Czajka. 1998. Counting the Uninsured: A Review of the Literature.
Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute.
about what program they are in, either because they

havent accessed health care services in some time, or
because their enrollment status changes frequently.
Others may provide misleading information because
they are embarrassed to be associated with a welfarelike public program. Still others may report a source of
coverage other than Medicaid if they: are confused by
the similarity of the program names (e.g., Medicare
and Medicaid); have multiple sources of coverage (e.g.,
Medicare, private third-party coverage); associate
Medicaid coverage with a commercial product because
they are enrolled in a Medicaid managed care plan; or
think they are covered by a different state-subsidized
health care program altogether.
While the research community has established that the
number of people reporting Medicaid coverage is
consistently lower than the number enrolled in the
program according to administrative records, the
question remains whether some portion of Medicaid
recipients report having no insurance or some other
source of insurance in surveys asking about health
insurance coverage.
MINNESOTAS MEDICAID UNDERCOUNT

EXPERIMENT
To examine the accuracy of Medicaid enrollees
responses to health insurance surveys, SHADAC
researchers conducted the Medicaid Undercount
Experiment (MUE). By asking a random sample of
known Minnesota Health Care Program enrollees (i.e.,
Medicaid, MinnesotaCare and General Assistance
Medical Care) about their health insurance coverage in
conjunction with a statewide general population survey,
researchers were able to determine: (1) the frequency
with which Medicaid recipients accurately reported
their public coverage, and (2) the impact of inaccurate
reports on survey estimates of coverage derived from
the statewide survey.
As shown in Figure 1, only 37% of known Medicaid
enrollees responded accurately to survey questions
about their health insurance. The remaining 63% were
labeled missed Medicaid cases due to the following:
communication barriers or refusals (13.8%), lack of
telephone (18.0%), or inaccurate responses to questions
about insurance coverage (31.4%). The inaccurate

responses consisted of 2.8% reporting no coverage
at all, 7.8% reporting private coverage, and 20.8%
reporting the wrong type of public coverage (e.g.,
Medicare, MinnesotaCare, or General Assistance
Medical Care). About half of the later group (10.2%)
were eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid,
and reported having Medicare, but not Medicaid,
coverage.
programs, the populations they serve, and in the health

care delivery systems that serve them may affect the
outcome of this research. Future work by SHADAC
researchers will therefore repeat the MUE in additional
states to determine the magnitude of the Medicaid
undercount and examine sources of the undercount.
This will allow us to assess the extent to which the
results can be generalized to other states, and the
feasibility of developing a method for adjusting survey
estimates to account for the Medicaid undercount.
The policy implications of these findings are

important: the Medicaid undercountat least as
measured by the MUE in Minnesotaintroduced only
a negligible upward bias to estimates of the uninsured
produced by the state survey. Specifically, we calculated
the bias introduced by inaccurate survey responses
among all public program enrollees in the MUE
which reduced Minnesotas uninsurance estimate by
only 0.26 percentage points, from 5.29 to 5.03
percent.2 This difference is not significant; therefore
inaccurate reports of coverage among Medicaid
recipients were found not to bias the estimate of
uninsurance.
IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND FURTHER

RESEARCH
SHADACs findings imply that while general
population surveys like the CPS systematically
underestimate participation in the Medicaid program,
the effect on estimates of uninsurance may be
extremely modest. This seemingly technical result has
real policy implications at state and national levels, and
is good news for analysts concerned about the validity
of survey estimates of those lacking health insurance
coverage. Our research suggests that, at least with
respect to the survey implemented in the state of
Minnesota, health policy and resource allocation
decisions have not been misinformed.
We recognize the importance of replicating our results
in other states, as these findings have implications
beyond Minnesotas borders. We also acknowledge
that differences in survey instruments, public
State estimate of uninsurance reported in 1999 Minnesota Health Access Survey (MNHA).
The State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota promotes
the effective use of available data to inform the debate on health coverage and access. For a
complete account of this study, please see:
Call, Kathleen Thiede, Gestur Davidson, Anna Stauber Sommers, Roger Feldman, Paul
Farseth, and Todd Rockwood, 2002. Uncovering the Missing Medicaid Cases and
Assessing their Bias for Estimates of the Uninsured. Inquiry. 38(4): 396-408.
State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) | University of Minnesota School of Public Health
612-624-4802 | fax: 612-624-1493 | www.shadac.org
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Translating Research to Policy

Do National Surveys Overestimate the Number

to cause upward bias in survey estimates

EXPLAINING THE MEDICAID

about what program they are in, either because they

MINNESOTAS MEDICAID UNDERCOUNT

about insurance coverage (31.4%). The inaccurate

programs, the populations they serve, and in the health

The policy implications of these findings are

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND FURTHER

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