A cross-sectional study of parental awareness of and reasons for lack of health insurance among minority children, and the impact on health, access to care, and unmet needs

Table 5 Racial/ethnic differences in health status, special healthcare needs, access to healthcare, unmet healthcare needs, use of health services, parental out-of-pocket costs of health services, parental satisfaction with pediatric care, and parental-reported financial burden of child’s healthcare among uninsured minority children eligible for but not insured by Medicaid or CHIP (N = 267)^a

Measure	Latinos (N = 174)	African-Americans (N = 93)	P
Health status
Worry about child’s health more than other people	89 %	73 %	<.01
Special healthcare need
Asthma	10 %	25 %	<.01
ADHD	4 %	12 %	.02
Access to healthcare
Has no PCP	70 %	52 %	<.01
No usual source of preventive care	51 %	23 %	<.01
Source of sick care and preventive care different	60 %	45 %	.02
Usual source of care has no night or weekend office hours	93 %	79 %	<.01
Doesn’t have 24-hour phone coverage for sick care	95 %	75 %	<.01
No access to same-day sick-care visit without appointment	27 %	43 %	.01
Never/sometimes receive help or advice over phone	3 %	11 %	.01
Unmet healthcare needs
Didn’t receive all needed acute care	5 %	18 %	.01
Didn’t receive all needed prescription medications	7 %	15 %	.03
Use and out-of-pocket costs of health services
Mean out-of-pocket cost per doctor visit^b	$153.2	$119.5	<.01
Mean out-of-pocket cost per preventive-care visit^c	$50.0	$40.4	.03
Mean out-of-pocket cost per sick visit^d	210.3	160.5	.01
Mean number of sick visits in past year	1.8	1.7	.04
Mean number of ED visits in past year	0.5	1.5	.03
Parental satisfaction with care
Doctor never/sometimes understands how I prefer to raise my child	21 %	37 %	.01
Parental-reported financial burden
Need additional income to cover child’s medical expenses	39 %	55 %	.02

^aThere were no significant racial/ethnic differences for any measure not listed in the table
^bAmong children who made any doctor visit
^cAmong children who made any preventive-care visit
^dAmong children who made any sick visit

ISSN: 1475-9276