Quick Insurance Tips

Although maternity insurance may be available in limited circumstances, buying health or life insurance will be difficult for not only a pregnant woman, but for the other parent as well. For this reason, it is important to have the insurance you need in place before you conceive.

One of the events that makes people think about their insurance is the birth of a child. However, the need for additional insurance probably starts much earlier than the actual birth.

Parents can die before a child is born. This can mean the child is born into poverty or at least into a family with a very strained budget.

Getting appropriate amounts of life, health and disability insurance before your child is conceived is important. Neither the mother-to-be nor the other parent is likely to qualify to add to their life or health insurance when they are expecting.

Fathers-to-be may not expect that they will be ineligible for health and life insurance. Why would they be? They are not carrying the child.

The reason that both parents may be ineligible is that many policies include a provision that forces the company to insure any newborn children of the primary insured or spouse.

Parents who learn that their unborn child has a medical problem would be more likely to purchase policies than other parents. This would result in “adverse selection.” This means that the insurance company would suffer a disproportionate number of claims if they allowed parents-to-be to purchase medical or life insurance coverage.

It is important that life, health and disability insurance policies be updated before a child is conceived. In order to protect your child, you have to start early or wait until the child is born. This means that you may have 9 months without the protection your child deserves unless you plan ahead.

You can expect to pay $10,000 to $20,000 or even more for a normal non-Cesarean delivery. The cost of a Cesarean birth will cost about fifty per cent more.

The amounts that doctors and hospitals charge for various medical services varies widely even within the same region. To get an answer more relevant to you should contact your local hospital and any doctors you are considering using.

Also since prices are rising all the time, any cost figures in this blog post might have changed before you got a chance to read this.

After you have contacted one provider to get their costs, you may want to call a second and maybe a third. It may pay to comparison shop because often hospitals that are a short drive away from each other will charge very different prices. The same is true of obstetricians.

Having a baby without insurance can be costly for three reasons. The cost of a normal pregnancy is very high. The cost of a pregnancy with complications is even higher. The cost of having an unhealthy baby who is uninsured can be even higher than that.

Maternity insurance may be available to you. This depends on your location and other criteria. If you are thinking about getting pregnant you should think seriously about your health insurance. Make sure that your health insurance covers pregnancy before you conceive.

If you are already pregnant, you may qualify for state-sponsored health insurance plans that will cover your maternity costs or part of them.

You will probably have much better options if you are not already pregnant. It is better to get coverage in place before you start trying to conceive.

Waiting until the last minute and having a baby with no insurance can cost you and your family more than the cost of a new car.

Health insurance plans that cover maternity are often much more expensive than otherwise similar individual health insurance plans that do not provide pregnancy insurance. For this reason you we suggest two strategies to lower your costs.

Two Health Insurance Policies May be Cheaper

When you find the best health insurance for maternity you may find that the policy is not the best one for the rest of the family. This may mean that you it is in your best interests to have one policy for the woman seeking to get pregnant and another for the rest of the family. We typically see savings of $100 to $300 a month using this strategy.

Maternity Insurance Benefit Timing

I’m constantly asked “can you get insurance while pregnant?” Usually the answer is “no.” There may be a governmental mandate in your area or a state-sponsored program that will cover you. Even if this is the case, chances are your choices will be much more limited, if you have any choices at all if you find yourself pregnant with no insurance.

Because of this, it is important to get the coverage in place before you conceive. With some policies, you must purchase the coverage long before you conceive. With others you will only need to be insured just before conception.

Since insurance that covers maternity is so expensive ideally, you would get the coverage just before you need it and drop it right after. While this is a recommended strategy to lower your costs it comes with an obvious risk and one that isn’t so obvious.

Pregnancies aren’t always planned. By trying to save money by going without maternity until you need it you may wind up paying more because you got pregnant before you purchased the additional coverage.

If your health declines, you may not be able to qualify for a maternity insurance plan. Something as unrelated as a broken leg can keep you from getting another policy until you are released by your doctor. Health issues that are more serious, such as diabetes, can keep you from changing your coverage at any time.

With the medical costs associated with pregnancy increasing each year it is important to have the maternity coverage when you need it. However, since this coverage is so expensive to purchase as part of an individual health insurance policy, thought must be given to the process as you look for the best health and maternity insurance for your family.

Failing to update your insurance policies can cost you a lot. It can cost you in extra monthly payments for coverage you no longer need. It can cost you when hazard impacts an uncovered or poorly covered asset.

Your need for insurance may change from year to year. You should review your coverage each year to make sure your insurance covers you well.

Health Insurance

Owing a health insurance policy that included maternity insurance may have been a crucial component of your insurance planning a few years ago. However, if you are past the baby making stage of your life, maternity insurance may just represent a cost with no benefits.

Your need for low deductible insurance may have also passed. If your children are older, you may no longer be concerned about frequent visits to the doctor and my do be just as well served by a higher deductible policy.

Life Insurance

If the amount you have purchased for life insurance will no longer generate the income you want your family to have after you are gone, or will no longer pay for the things you intended it to pay for, it may be time for a review. Conversely, if your assets have grown, you may need less insurance on your life. If your children are no longer minors, you may need less coverage as well.

Auto insurance

If your car has gotten older, you may want to drop the comprehensive and collision coverages on it. You may be surprised at how low a payment you might get for the loss of your car. It may be best to take the money you save by having a lower auto insurance premium and use it to help you save for a new car.

Home insurance

Your home insurance policy should cover, among other things, the cost of rebuilding or repairing your home. If construction costs have gone up in your area since you last updated your coverage, you may want to update your policy.

The risk of paying higher taxes with universal healthcare should be weighed against not just the benefit of easing of pain and suffering and extending life, but also the benefits of the tax dollars that might be generated by those who aren’t hampered by the current system.  The person who is disabled today because he couldn’t afford health care when his condition was preventable might be working today.  He might be paying taxes instead of collecting from social security if we had a universal healthcare system.  The woman who today who is shackled to her job because a family member is uninsurable in the private health insurance market might be the person who invents the next great thing.

Better Preventative Health Care May Reduce Our Costs

Although it is true that the poor have access to health care today, the access is biased towards expensive care one might need in an emergency medical situation as opposed to the relatively inexpensive care one might need to prevent that emergency situation.

There must be countless men and women who are currently out of work and on the dole who would love to be working and supporting their families.  Few of us want to be out of work.  Fewer of us want to be sick and out of work.

In many cases the disabled former tax payers had relatively minor preexisting conditions that turned into major disabling conditions.  These conditions were only allowed to become major medical conditions because the person couldn’t afford proper preventative care.  The cost of this care pales in comparison to the cost of losing a tax payer and gaining a “tax eater.”

A Lack of Health Insurance Options May Reduce Innovation

Many people are afraid to leave their jobs because they are afraid of losing their healthcare coverage and slows our economy. This fear keeps people shackled to jobs that no longer fit them.  A person who has the ability and experience to do something bigger may stay at a job because the opportunity to do something else means that they will leave their coverage behind.  This doesn’t happen in the other countries that use a universal healthcare system.

The next Bill Gates or Thomas Edison may be forced to stay in their current job because they have a daughter with Crohns disease or a genetic defect.  They are not going to take the risk of leaving their job and create the next computer innovation or light bulb.  We lose and they lose.

A major innovation isn’t necessary for this to hurt us.  Small improvements multiplied by thousands or millions of workers could be enough to turn our economy around and drive us forward.  If John is forced to stay with a company with no advancement opportunities because of health insurance issues, he can’t work at another company that can use all of his abilities and make that company great.  If the same is true for Jane and Barbara and Dave… we are losing a lot of production due to this forced underemployment that is driven by the current system.

If universal healthcare can increase the number of tax payers and reduce the number of “tax-eaters” we may find that it improves our economy.  By helping those in need we may be helping every American whether rich or poor.

This may not technically be a secret, but it is not well known even among insurance agents.  I was an agent for almost 20 years before I discovered that the default way to insure a family wasn’t always the cheapest or best way.

My wife figured this out when she worked briefly as my assistant.  She was calculating rates for a family that needed maternity insurance and investigated some options that I would not have.

She was carrying our child and had some extra time on her hands, so she helped out in the agency.  I think that was the last time that she had extra time on her hands.  We have a very health and active child now.

What she discovered is that putting the entire family on the same policy isn’t always the lowest cost way to insure them.  The Blue Cross Blue Shield policy with maternity coverage had some extra benefits on it that the rest of the family didn’t need.  We were able to save the family $200 a month by insuring the husband and the other child on a different policy.

My wife’s discovery led me to look for other situations where a family would benefit from being on separate policies.

There is a negative that should be addressed first. In many cases if a family has separate health insurance policies, they will pay more of their medical expenses.  Typically a family can only pay two deductibles regardless of how many people have medical expenses if they are all on the same policy.  With separate policies this isn’t the case.

The main reason that buying separate policies is sometimes less expensive than purchasing one family policy is based on the way a given health insurance company calculates the rates for a particular policy series.

The rating calculation for many policies is based on the company calculating the rates for each family member as if they were to be on separate plans and then simply adding the rates together.  With those policies you will pay the same whether you insure everyone on one policy or on separate policies.  However many companies will have family rates based on the age of the younger or older spouse.  This can be an advantage for some families and a disadvantage for others.

We now help our clients take advantage of the different ways companies calculate rates.  For example Blue Cross Blue Shield in Connecticut will calculate the rates for most of their policies based on the age of the younger spouse and the number of insured family members.  This means that the 60 year old woman who marries the 29 year old man is paying the same rate that a 29 year old woman would pay if married to the same man.  This is of course to her advantage.

However since this company doesn’t have a separate rate calculation category for single parents, a 12 year old girl would also pay the same rate as the 60 year old if she were insured on a policy with her father and there are no other family members on the policy.

In most scenarios a family will get the best price by insuring everyone on the same policy. But people who meet the following criteria may find that their rates are very different with different companies:

• Families with more than two children
• Couples where the one spouse is more than 5 years older than the other
• Families needing to insure two people only where one is a child
• Families needing to insure only a child or children
• Families with children where a parent is over 50

Usually big differences in prices are a big clue that there is a corresponding difference in quality.  However that isn’t always true.  Sometimes the difference is in how the insurance company calculates the rates.  I hope that this “secret” that my wife discovered helps you save money.  It has taught me once again how smart my wife is and reminded me that there is always something new I can learn about insurance if I’m willing to listen to smart people even if they are involved in another profession.

It is important to make the right decision regarding maternity insurance. Having this coverage adds a lot to the cost a typical health insurance policy. Not having it when you need it can also cost you a bundle.

Pregnancy is expensive. The cost of having a baby is well over $10,000 today and over $20,000 in some parts of the country. Affordable insurance with maternity can be hard to find and it is important to have this coverage before you conceive. Your options will be limited if you are pregnant with no insurance.

Not all policies cover maternity, so don’t take this coverage for granted. Also, the coverage will generally only extend to the primary insured or the spouse of the primary insured. Don’t assume that if you have maternity insurance on your policy that your daughter does as well.