Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey - Survey File

The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) - Survey File Microdata Public Use File (PUF) dataset provides information on topics such as Medicare beneficiaries' access to care, health status, other information regarding beneficiaries’ knowledge of, attitudes toward, and satisfaction with their health care, as well as demographic data and information on all types of health insurance coverage.Resources for Using and Understanding the DataThis dataset is based on information from the MCBS and administrative data. The MCBS is a continuous, multi-purpose longitudinal survey covering a representative national sample of the Medicare population, including the population of beneficiaries aged 65 and over and beneficiaries aged 64 and below with certain disabling conditions. The MCBS collects this information in three data collection periods, or rounds, per year. Disclosure protections have been applied to the file, including de-identification and other methods. As a result, the MCBS Survey File Microdata file does not require a Data Use Agreement (DUA). In contrast, the MCBS Limited Data Set (LDS) releases contain beneficiary-level protected health information (PHI) and therefore require a DUA. The MCBS - Survey File Microdata file is not intended to replace the more detailed LDS files but, rather, it makes available a general-use publicly-available alternative that provides the highest degree of protection to the Medicare beneficiaries’ PHI. The main benefits of using the MCBS - Survey File Microdata file are:Increased data access for researchers of the MCBS through a free file download that is consistent with other U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) public-use survey files.Enhanced potential for policy-relevant analyses, by attracting new researchers and policymakers. Accessing the MCBS LDS can be a significant deterrent due to the associated costs and time but the MCBS - Survey File Microdata file mitigates these barriers to encourage broader utilization. A link to the more detailed MCBS LDS files is provided in the Resources section on this page. MCBS LDS data are also presented in the MCBS Chartbook linked in the Visualization section on this page.