Posts Tagged ‘Health insurance for pregnant woman’
What is COBRA?
COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, was initiated to provide emergency coverage for employees who receive health insurance through their employer, and for one reason or another, lose their job (for example, have been laid off) and find themselves without any health coverage. COBRA allows these employees to continue their group insurance coverage if they chose to even after they leave their position.
How Do You Apply For Cobra Coverage?
After you have been terminated, your employer should provide you with details as to how you can obtain COBRA coverage.
Any Specific COBRA Rules?
First, COBRA coverage also applies to the employee’s family. In addition, an employee can either choose to continue with COBRA or choose not to from the moment he has lost his job – he cannot use this coverage intermittently (i.e. start COBRA three months after he lost his job – in this case he will pay retroactively for those three months).
How Long Can I Carry COBRA coverage After My Job Loss?
COBRA coverage can last only a limited amount of time, typically about 18 months. This should give enough time to obtain a different source of health insurance. Hopefully by then the recession will be over as well, and the number of employed people would be on the rise.
What are the Advantages of Cobra?
The advantage of COBRA is that it is prevents an ex-employee from the need of obtaining a new health insurance - at least for a while. As stated in other articles, getting such insurance can prevent one from getting treatment for pre-existing conditions. For example, a pregnant woman who is laid off and loses her insurance will have a hard time obtaining a new insurance. Thanks to COBRA, however, this is no longer an issue, as she can simply continue her existing coverage.
And the Disadvantages?
Note that depending on the employer, although employees are eligible to continue their previous health, dental and vision coverage, the employer no longer needs to sponsor this. This effectively means that the ex-employee pays the full cost of his health coverage, which will be much greater than what it used to be.
Personally speaking, I was using the COBRA scheme for a while, and as far as I remember, I paid about four times as much as I paid before, and this is after limiting the coverage to myself only. This truly makes one realize how big of a benefit health insurance is, and how much companies pay for health coverage for their employees.
COBRA Health Insurance and the Stimulus Plan
Thanks to the economic stimulus package (which started in February 17, 2009), certain people who lost their jobs are eligible to receive partial payment for their COBRA premium. We will discuss the eligibility criteria in the next article in this series.
Maternity Plus: offers an insurance plan for pregnant women who have no insurance. Their programs includes doctor’s visits, hospitals, sonograms, lab work and much more. Click here to receive a quote.
Click on the image above to receive a quote for Maternity Health Insurance.
Although it is important for everyone to possess health insurance, it is particularly important in the context of pregnancy. 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.
This not only affects the unborn child, but the pregnant women as well. For example, certain types of abnormalities or genetic diseases can be discovered in advance if screened for. Additionally, certain risk factors could be assessed and be taken of that could endanger the baby once born. Furthermore, since there is always some risk involved during a pregnancy for the women, it is wise to continuously monitor the state of the pregnancy to make sure all is well. 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 the unborn child or the woman herself.
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.
Obtaining health insurance coverage for uninsured pregnant women has become even more challenging today because of the towering costs of health insurance in the United States. According to the American Health Association, 41 million Americans are not insured, and around 13% pregnant women in the country do not possess any form of health insurance. This puts these women and their unborn children at unnecessary risk.
Prenatal checkups can be very expensive, not to mention hospital and delivery charges which could cost $10,000 or more. Furthermore, if there are complications, such as premature birth or the need for a cesarean section operation, the costs would be much greater. Therefore, it is strongly recommended for a pregnant women to obtain health insurance.
The problem is that most health insurance 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. But as is the case in life, often the unpredictable occurs, so if you are uninsured and found out you are pregnant, here are some useful tips that could help you obtain health insurance:
First, shop around – search the internet – for health insurance companies who can provide pregnancy health coverage and discounted health care coverage. It is easy to get free instant quotes from multiple providers. In fact, this site offers a way to shop around for maternity health plans: Click here to receive a quote.
Second, there are some federally funded programs which offer healthcare coverage for low income people. Medicaid, for example, allows you to enroll in a health insurance plan even when you are pregnant. An additional program is CHIP. Some states have specialized programs for this purpose: investigate whether your state offers one.
Third, look for additional benefits provided by other agencies. WIC is a federal agency that offers health services to low income women and children under 5, and also provides food supplements.
Finally, if you are in a position where you have several options, make sure you choose your plan carefully: choose the plan which covers all the benefits you may require. For example a hospital-only plan will not cover visits to a physician’s clinic.
Note that if you are a pregnant women that possesses insurance and wishes to travel abroad, you may want to check our article Travel Insurance and Pregnancy.