Health Care Financing for CSHCN

The consistency and adequacy of health insurance can have a significant impact on children's access to needed health-care services. This is particularly true for children with special health care needs (CSHCN). In 2009-10, the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN) asked parents whether their child had insurance coverage in the past 12 months and, if so, what kind they had. Overall, 90.7 percent of CSHCN were insured for all of the previous 12 months, while the remaining 9.3 percent were uninsured for all or some part of the year (data not shown in graph images or in data tables on this site).

At the time of the interview, 96.5 percent of CSHCN were reported to have some type of insurance: 50.7 percent had private insurance and 34.7 percent had public insurance, 7.9 percent had both private and public insurance, while 3.5 percent were uninsured at the time of the interview. The proportion of CSHCN with private and public insurance coverage changed significantly over the last decade. In 2001, 64.7 percent of CSHCN had private and 21.7 percent had public coverage. This reflects a decline of over 20 percent in the proportion of CSHCN with private coverage and a nearly 60 percent increase in the proportion with public coverage over the decade (data not shown in graph images or in data tables on this site).

CSHCN without health insurance are less likely to receive the health care they need than those with insurance. CSHCN without current health insurance coverage were less likely than those with insurance to have a usual source of sick care (85.6 percent versus 92.9 percent), to receive all needed dental care (79.2 versus 95.1 percent) and prescription medications (84.1 percent versus 97.9 percent) and to receive all needed mental health services (85.1 versus 94.7 percent).

This image is described in the Data section.

This image is described in the Data section.