From Medical News Today:

In a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that out-of-pocket health care costs for families of children with special needs vary widely across the states.

Costs ranged from a low annual average of $560 for out-of-pocket expenses in Massachusetts,to a high of $970 in Georgia. The study, by Paul Shattuck of Washington University in St. Louis and Susan L. Parish of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, noted that wealthier states tend to have a lower average extra cost for caring for a child with special needs.

“The overall percentage of U.S. families caring for children with special needs that experience an added financial burden was 91.2 percent,” Shattuck said. “This group faced average extra out-of-pocket care costs of $774 per year for expenses related to their child’s special needs.

Shattuck concluded that programs like Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program “may not be going far enough to help families with children with special needs.”

Full rankings here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 7:36 am and is filed under economics, families, health care, research news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.