Health Care Access for Adults with Disabilities

• Activity Number: 445
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Frances Chevarley* and Amy Taylor
• Companies: AHRQ and AHRQ
• Keywords: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) ; Adults with disabilities ; Access to health care ; healthcare utilization ; healthcare expenditures ; gender

Abstract

Healthcare for persons with disabilities is an important issue for public policy makers. The Affordable Care Act will have benefits for people with disabilities since insurance companies will not be able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. This paper focuses on health insurance, access to health care, and utilization and cost of services, of adults with and without disabilities. Several measures of disability will be used including limitations in basic and complex activity limitations. Both descriptive and multivariate methods will be used. This analysis will use pooled data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a nationally representative sample of the US non-institutionalized population, for years 2007-2012. Preliminary data show higher mean health care expenditures in 2012 for those with basic ($13,802) or with complex ($15,337) activity limitations, compared with those with neither ($3,433). Preliminary data also show adults with basic and adults with complex activity limitations were both more likely than adults with neither to report problems in communications with their providers.