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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Health Insurance For Pregnant Women

By Tom Harkenshire

Although it is important for everyone to have a health insurance, it is particularly important in the context of pregnant women. The reason is obvious: there are many things that can go wrong during pregnancy, or could be made better if the woman is aware of certain facts. Therefore, it is essential that pregnant women periodically receive check-ups in order to make sure the pregnancy is progressing properly and there are no detectable problems with their unborn child.

Unfortunately, many pregnant women do not have health insurance. It has been statistically shown that when they deliver, their babies are more likely to have low birth weight and higher incidents of death.

What may come as a surprise to the reader is the large number of Americans that do not possess health insurance (some 41 million US citizens). Consequently, about 13% of pregnant women in this country do not possess health insurance as well. This is dangerous for the women as well as their unborn children.

In the event that an uninsured pregnant woman insists on getting the routine medical care she should be getting, the costs can be astronomical. Prenatal checkups are expensive, and hospital and delivery charges could easily cost more than $10,000. Furthermore, if there are any complications during the pregnancy or the delivery (such as premature birth, or cesarean section surgery), the costs would grow far beyond that. Consequently, it is of utmost importance that every pregnant woman obtains health insurance.

The problem is that most companies do not accept new insurance policies from pregnant women whose pregnancy has been assessed as a pre-existing condition. Ideally, if you are a woman and you know you wish to get pregnant, things would be much easier for you if you got health insurance before you got pregnant. That being said, if you are uninsured and found out you are pregnant, here are some useful tips that could help you obtain health insurance:

First, use all the resources at your disposal: shop around, search the internet, ask physicians. There are health insurance companies who may be able to provide pregnancy health coverage and discounted health care coverage, you just need to find them. These days it is extremely easy to obtain health insurance quotes online from a long list of providers, so use this, and you are likely to find a health insurance that will accept you.

Second, there are federally funded health insurance plans for low income people. Medicaid allows an uninsured woman to enroll in such a plan even if she's pregnant. Another program is CHIP. It may be worthwhile to check the plans offered by your state: there are occasionally programs local to a specific state.

Third, check with other agencies. For example, WIC is a federal agency that enables low income women and children under 5 to obtain health services.

Finally, if despite all the obstacles you find yourself with several potential health insurance plans at your disposal, make sure you pick the one that addresses all the issues that may be relevant for you. For example, a hospital-only plan will not cover visits to a doctor's office.

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