Health insurance is a globally accepted way of eradicating the risk of incurring medical costs, including liability and other associated financial expenses. Simply put, it is a convenient way for most people to attend to their medical needs without necessarily incurring debt. This is a common practice across many countries, where people from all levels of society, irrespective of their financial status, technically benefit from this practice – albeit at different capacities. It is believed that developing countries and countries with low GDP will mostly have limited access to health facilities compared to developed countries and those with high GDP. This may lead people from countries with low GDP to incur out-of-pocket medical expenses that are mostly unaffordable, leading to the loss of lives.

In the United States, Medicare is an insurance program designed by the government for people above 64 years and those below 65 with a qualifying disability. The Center of Medicare & Medical Services (CMS) performs a yearly and longitudinal survey to monitor and assess the performance of the insurance program. “The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) consists of a representative national sample of the Medicare population sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The MCBS is designed to aid CMS in administering, monitoring, and evaluating Medicare programs. The MCBS primarily focuses on economic and beneficiary topics, including healthcare use and healthcare access barriers, healthcare expenditures, and factors that affect healthcare utilization. As a part of this focus, the MCBS collects a variety of information about the beneficiary, including demographic characteristics, health status, access to care, insurance coverage, out-of-pocket expenses, financial resources, and potential family support.”  

The following dashboard describes the data on the survey showing the differences in the Insurance Coverage and Level of Satisfaction with Medicare Services.