EXHIBIT 1.

Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) respondents, by self-reported functional hearing difficulty, 2016

		Percent by level of functional hearing difficulty
Characteristics	Percent of total sample (N = 10,422)	No trouble hearing (n = 5,264)a	A little trouble hearing (n = 4,406)b	A lot of trouble hearing (n = 752)c
No usual place of care	5.72	5.90	5.26	7.19
Not obtaining medical care	8.93	7.09	10.67	14.33
Not filling prescription	5.88	5.10	6.77	7.03
Age, years
65–69	34.59	38.61	31.09	20.64
70–74	25.37	26.67	24.34	20.93
75–79	17.23	17.28	17.32	15.75
80–84	11.68	9.78	13.93	14.47
85–89	7.12	5.31	8.55	14.41
90+	4.02	2.35	4.94	13.80
Female	55.03	61.11	48.63	41.82
Race/ethnicity
Non-Hispanic White	78.21	73.86	83.56	82.35
Non-Hispanic Black	8.86	10.65	6.74	6.51
Hispanic	7.45	9.33	4.99	6.70
Other	5.48	6.15	4.71	4.44
Educational attainment
Less than high school	15.74	15.79	14.13	26.49
High school graduate	25.45	25.10	25.37	29.39
Vocational, some college, associate’s degree	29.03	28.61	29.86	27.14
Bachelor’s or higher degree	29.78	30.50	30.63	16.97
Income-to-poverty ratio
<100%	11.19	12.41	9.12	14.02
101–200%	23.84	23.39	23.01	33.87
>200%	64.97	64.20	67.87	52.10
Currently married	57.35	56.57	59.29	51.28
Medicare Advantage enrollee	36.38	37.60	34.86	35.43
General health
Excellent	19.54	22.22	17.47	8.61
Very good	32.93	34.02	32.60	24.83
Good	30.15	29.52	30.92	30.66
Fair	13.33	11.10	14.56	25.99
Poor	4.06	3.16	4.45	9.92
Functional limitations
None	74.74	79.79	71.56	48.80
1	11.85	9.88	13.53	18.82
2+	13.41	10.32	14.91	32.39
Chronic comorbidities count
None	10.20	12.13	8.36	4.71
1–2	42.91	46.64	40.12	26.89
3–5	38.19	33.94	42.49	48.67
6+	8.69	7.29	9.03	19.73

SOURCE Authors’ analysis of data from the MCBS, 2016.

NOTE Survey weights were applied according to MCBS instructions.

^a54.42% of weighted sample.

^b39.87% of weighted sample.

^c5.71% of weighted sample.