Medicare Data

Abstract

Medicare is a federal health insurance program for nearly all Americans aged 65 and over, for younger persons entitled to Social Security disability payments for at least 2 years, and for people with end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It is administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the US Department of Health and Human Services. In 2016, persons with entitlement due to these mandates numbered over 48 million, 8.8 million, and 525 000, respectively. Medicare, especially the program's extensive repository of enrollment and administrative claims information, are a unique resource for health services research, owing to the program's size, national representativeness, continuity of enrollment, presence of race and date‐of‐death data, well‐documented history of use in research, and the help available for researchers wishing to use the data for studies of potential benefit to Medicare beneficiaries.