In general,
the top two reasons given by people without disabilities for not getting
medical care is that the treatment’s not covered by insurance or that it costs
too much money. There was a disability
healthcare access brief published in 2007 that also went on to say that in
terms of statistics, 28% of insured people with disabilities reported needing
particular therapies, equipment or medications that were not covered by their
health plans compared to only 7% of those people without disabilities. In this report they gave several examples
from parents and other individuals and for example, one parent reported that their
annual out of pocket expenses were approximately $15,000 for healthcare needs
for her child who had a disability because the family’s insurance covered only
specific brands of supplies such as for example, diapers to which her child was
allergic. 19% of people with
disabilities reported they did not receive medical care needed in the past year
compared to only 6% of non disabled people.
Interestingly, they also did some checking of athletes at the 2003
Special Olympics. They looked at 3500
athletes, all of whom had intellectual disabilities and what they found was
that over a third of them had obvious signs of tooth decay. 12% reported tooth or mouth pain and that’s
compared to only 2% of all U. S. employed adults who go to the dentist. A third of the athletes in the winter and
summer games of the Special Olympics had never received an eye exam. So you get the sense that, for example people
with disabilities particularly developmental disabilities such as Down’s
syndrome, need access to healthcare need access to vision care and it’s oftentimes
not there. One issue with that too is
that these individuals may sometimes need a specialist to conduct basic vision
and hearing tests but that insurance companies will refuse to refer the members
who have such disabilities to an out of network specialist because the
insurance covers only in network providers who may lack experience or
familiarity in working with people who have a particular type of disability.
We should also note that the severity of one’s disability makes a
difference. Not surprisingly, the more
severe your disability, the more likely you are to have needs that aren’t
covered by insurance. And in fact,
again, compared to the non disabled population, people with severe disabilities
are almost four times more likely to have inadequate health insurance compared
to people in general and even people with slight disabilities. 40% of people with severe disabilities aren’t
getting their insurance needs met compared to only 11% of those with slight
disabilities.
There was a survey done in 2003 sponsored by the Kaiser Foundation
and this survey particularly looked at some of the issues faced by people who
have disabilities and they looked at people who are non elderly – they view
that as people under the age of 65. The
next few slides give you a brief summary of some of the information some of the
data that they found. Looking at this
first slide here in terms of problems paying for selective health care
services, notice that of their respondents and they had over 1500 people
respond to this, all of whom had permanent physical and/or mental
disabilities, they found that 32%, almost a third of them, reported significant
serious problems paying for prescription drugs, a slightly lesser amount
reported concerns with regard to paying for dental care. You can read the rest of the slide yourself,
but each of these areas, prescription drugs, dental care, equipment, were areas
of concern for people with disabilities in terms of their ability to pay for
it.
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