State Variation in High-Burden Medical Out-of-Pocket Spending: Results from the Current Population Survey

Lacey Hartman, University of Minnesota
Gilbert Gonzalez, University of Minnesota
Sharon K. Long, University of Minnesota
Julie Sonier, University of Minnesota
Lynn Blewett, University of Minnesota

The issue of high burden medical spending has received increased attention over the years as health care costs continue to dramatically outpace growth in wages. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes provisions to help protect families from high out of pocket spending for health care beginning in 2014. Much of the burden of implementing health reform will lie with states, and state level evaluations will be essential for monitoring the effectiveness of the reforms. We will use 2010 and 2011 data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to produce state level estimates of the share of the population with high burden out of pocket spending and evaluate the potential for the ACA to reduce the burden of high out of pocket spending across states. Preliminary results suggest that there is substantial variation across the states in the share of the population with high burden out of pocket spending.