Requiring hospital care can be stressful for children and their families, and this stress can continue after discharge when the hospital bill arrives. As documented by Carlton et al,1 out-of-pocket costs for children’s hospitalizations can be substantial. In their study of commercial claims for 183 780 non–birth-related hospitalizations from 2017 to 2019 for children aged 0 to 18 years measured in national MarketScan claims data, they found that the mean out-of-pocket cost per hospitalization was $1313 and exceeded $3000 for 14% of hospitalizations. Not surprisingly, children in high-deductible health plans had higher out-of-pocket costs per hospitalization. Relatedly, hospitalizations in the first part of the calendar year incurred higher out-of-pocket costs, presumably because annual deductibles had reset. More unexpectedly, children without chronic conditions had higher out-of-pocket hospitalization costs.
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