Healthy Living: Pregnancy and Health Insurance
Living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is always something that should be a top priority. Your body is the only one you are going to get in this lifetime, and you should always be thinking about how to take the best care of it. Ladies, when you’re having to think about being healthy for two (and no we aren’t talking about fretting over your partner’s alarming disdain for vegetables), your health is more important than ever.
Your body is home to a tiny, dependent little being, and making sure you have the best of resources available to you should be your top priority. Your baby needs frequent and adequate checkups from the moment of conception, and this can quickly get expensive if you don’t have health insurance during pregnancy. But sometimes figuring out the best health insurance for you and your soon-to-be new addition isn’t simple and straightforward.
Pregnancy and Health Insurance Options
As we all undoubtedly know, the health insurance situation in our country is pretty grim. There are over 41 million people who don’t have any form of health insurance, and many more people are actually considered under insured. This translates into a bleak portrait for those women trying to have a family, because 13% of women who get pregnant every year are without health insurance, and this translates into poor prenatal care. This is something that pregnant women just can’t afford. What makes this whole mess even more complicated is that some health insurance companies consider pregnancy a “pre-existing” condition. To be quite frank, this upsets me, as a woman. To call conceiving and carrying a human child a “pre-existing” medical condition is absurd and offensive, and shame on those companies who do this.
Medicaid, a federally funded program for individuals who can be considered low-income, will accept women who are already pregnant. However, if you are not eligible to receive Medicaid, then what are your other options for health insurance? The costs can skyrockets quickly. The estimated cost of delivery alone is $6,000 – $8,000 for a normal pregnancy, and the cost increases if it is a high risk pregnancy.
If you are pregnant and uninsured, look at Medicaid first. Because it is state-run, you may find that they partner up with other additional programs to help provide services to pregnant women. WIC (Women, Infants and Children) is a federal agency whose purpose is to safeguard the health and well-being of low-income women, infants and children under the age of 5 years old. WIC does things like provide foods to supplement diets lacking in the proper nutrients as well as referrals to health care. Find out if you can benefit from their services.
Next week we’ll look closer at pregnancy and health insurance. In the meantime, you can learn more about your health insurance options during pregnancy here.
photo credit: molly_darling
Tags: babies, children, health insurance, health insurance coverage, pregnancy, women
November 29th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Unfortunately our government doesn’t automatically pay for delivery and the months of care leading up to it, and I learned the hard way with my first baby that even the insured might still possibly pay more than you might think. I was shocked at all the charges they billed me for that the insurance wouldn’t cover including oxygen the nurses had forgotten to turn off and ran needlessly for almost two hours!
I’m now online researching anything information I can get and tips for my new baby. For any pregnant or possibly future parents, I found a free book online to help with any questions or concerns about pregnancy and new baby. In today’s troubles times, free anything is a blessing!
April 16th, 2010 at 1:10 am
There are approximately 13% of women who become pregnant each year who are not insured, which often results in inadequate prenatal care.