A NATIONAL household survey of the use of general hospitals has afforded an un¬ usual opportunity to obtain firsthand infor¬ mation on the extent of hospital prepayment coverage. The survey covered about 27,000 households, consisting of some 90,000 persons of all ages, drawn from the civilian noninstitu¬ tional population of each State then in the Union. It was conducted by the Bureau of the Census in September 1956, in connection with its Current Population Survey, for the Division of Hospital and Medical Facilities of the Public Health Service. It included three-fourths of the families in each of the 330 sample areas comprising the Current Population Survey base (1). Three earlier reports have described the survey procedures and presented provi¬ sional findings on various factors associated with the use of general hospitals {2-b).