subject: Buying Medical Coverage When Pregnant Finding Health Insurance While Pregnant [print this page] When you are carrying a child, but are not insured you should investigate all your insurance choices before looking at non insurance alternatives. health care insurance may be available through direct pay family policies, group policies, programs offered by local state or the federal government. However, in some cases you may find that all of these doors are closed and non insurance alternatives are the only way to lower your costs.
When you are in need of medical insurance for your pregnancy, you should exhaust all of your options before giving up because pregnancy expenses are very high today. Costs in the hospital can be $10,000 to $25,000. They can be higher. The cost is dependent on how much care costs your area and on whether or not you have complications.
Medical insurance carriers do not like to insure women who are carrying a child because they assume that will be given much less in premiums over the course of the first twelve months of health care insurance than they will spend out in benefits. For this reason you will likely only find health care insurance if there is a legal mandate in place that forces the health care insurance company to insure you.
Group insurance often falls under a mandate that forces the insurance carriers to take on women who are pregnant. This means that when you have an open enrollment period coming up before you give birth you may be able to get the major expenses of childbirth paid for by your medical insurance policy.
when your spouse or domestic partner has group health care insurance you may be able to be insured on his or her insurance during the next open enrollment period. Be sure to investigate that strategy as well if it is available to you.
There may be choices available to you locally. There are programs that will help lower the costs for pregnancy in some cities and counties.
You should also look on the state level for coverage choices. You may qualify for a program that will dramatically lower your expenses.
If you have health care insurance, but it doesn't cover childbirth expenses think very carefully about dropping the health care insurance. There are several reasons for this. You could still get sick or hurt independent of your pregnancy. Complications of pregnancy will probably be covered even if the expenses of a normal pregnancy aren't. Your baby will probably qualify to be added to the insurance even when the son or daughter needs costly medical care. You might not be able to qualify for a new policy in the future even after you are no longer pregnant.
When you have exhausted all our choices with insurance and with government-based programs there are at least two more choices available to you. You could negotiate and shop around to get a lower price for your pregnancy-related expenses. You might sign up for a non insurance discount plan. You could prepay your hospital bill.
You might lower your maternity-related expenses using tried and true methods that work for the other things you spend money on. You may also try negotiating with your hospital to get the price down. You might also shop around to find which local hospital will offer you the best price.
A discount might lower your expenses by giving you a discount on your hospital bill. These discounts might be substantial, but you will still be responsible for most of the bill.
Many hospitals will give you a deep discount if you could prepay your bill. This can dramatically lower your costs.
Be sure to check out all your options with private health insurance and government-based programs before looking at non insurance options. However, when you are unable to lower your bills with these alternatives, you should be sure to check out non-insurance alternatives also.
by: Alston Balkcom
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