Insurance Matters: Children
Children with public insurance (Medicaid or CHIP) or who had no coverage are at least 22 percent less likely than those with private insurance to receive testing or to undergo procedures when they visit the hospital emergency departments, researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston found. In addition, children with no insurance are less likely to receive any medication than children with public or private insurance.
That disparity did not hold true for kids diagnosed with a significant illness, who had the same odds of being admitted to the hospital regardless of insurance status.
Full study in the Journal of Pediatrics. KHN summary by Jenny Gold.
Of – hospitals are not going to turn down kids with a “significant illness”.
This suggests providers gauge the price-sensitivity of their patients and adjust the tests they order accordingly. This holds true except when their patients have serious medical conditions, in which case providers order the tests they believe their patients need. This also suggests that providers would react competitively under conditions where patients are price sensitive because they have consumer-driven health care.
But “it is uncertain how or why a child’s insurance status could be associated with care decisions in the ED.” A possible explanation, say the authors, is that privately insured patients are more likely to be referred to the ER by a physician.