Families of disabled children frequently struggle to pay medical bills

Families of children with disabilities were nearly twice as likely to report financial hardships as families of those without disabilities, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open.

Analyzing data for 22,670 children ages 5 to 17 from the 2019-2022 National Health Interview Survey, researchers recently found that some 22.3% of families with children who have disabilities experienced financial hardship. In comparison, about 12.6% of families with children who don’t have disabilities faced such difficulties.

The researchers cited an overall prevalence of disability of 17.4% based on self-reporting by parents. The most commonly reported disabilities were emotional or behavioral, with 10.8% of parents reporting one or more.

According to the study, families of children with disabilities had more difficulty paying their medical bills than other families and were more likely to have either public insurance or a combination of public and private insurance. They were also more likely to worry about expenses and had higher rates of delayed or forgone care due to cost.

The findings suggest that current insurance is “inadequate” for disabled children and that the situation could get worse, the study says.

“Proposed cuts to the federal contribution to Medicaid would likely exacerbate the financial distress of these families,” the authors write. “These data demonstrate a need to structure health insurance policies to ensure that children with disabilities have their needed medical care covered in a way that is not financially burdensome to families.”