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Parents of children with disabilities in Utah can apply for grants to help offset the costs of medical services that traditional insurance plans do not cover.

It is part of a plan by the United Healthcare Children's Foundation to bridge the gap between high fees for specialty medical services and a family's ability to pay them. About 100,000 Utah children under the age of 18 have disabilities.

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Scott Otto, assistant executive director of the foundation, said the insurance provider makes grants available to parents through its foundation to help cover medical costs that traditional insurance may reject.

"The goal of these grants is to help alleviate the financial burden that a family might be enduring, where their commercial coverage may not cover, or may not fully cover, the cost of the needed care," Otto explained.

In Utah, the foundation has awarded 211 medical grants for kids and families valued at $345,000. Parents do have to be enrolled in a traditional health care plan to qualify for the grants, but it does not have to be with UnitedHealthcare.

The grants can be used to cover a variety of services, including therapy, prescriptions and medical devices, or even to help offset the cost of major surgeries that may not be covered.

"We certainly can help underwrite some of those costs but we're also able to underwrite even just some of the little more day-to-day, kind of drip, drip, drip, kind of cost," Otto noted. "The $20 co-pay every time you go to the pharmacy, or every time you go to physical therapy, or that kind of a visit."

The foundation has awarded more than 40,000 grants totaling $80 million since launching the program in 2005.