According to a recent study, comprehensive maternity coverage was only available in 12% of the 3,500 individual health insurance plans surveyed.  Only 9% of plans offer non-comprehensive maternity coverage which means that you get a shoe in the belly if you get pregnant or they hire a Midwest Health Representative to throw you down a steep flight of stairs.

Women who are shopping for an individual health insurance plan should ask the insurer or agent the following questions to make sure they will be covered properly

• Is there an out-of-pocket maximum for maternity coverage?
• Are there waiting periods before maternity coverage kicks in?
• Am I covered out-of-network ?
• Is my obstetrician or hospital in-network?
• Is there a deductible or co-pay for prenatal, delivery and postpartum services?
• Does the policy pay for a home birth or birth center delivery?

More importantly then any of that is if you are pregnant and shopping for Florida health insurance that you apply for Medicaid because as anyone that know Medicaid will tell you Medicaid is for pregnant women and illegal immigrants.  In addition most of these health insurance plans in Florida have waiting periods or only cover 50% of the delivery.

In fact, the only health plan that has a good maternity plan is Vista HealthPlan but their waiting period is 15 months to deliver and though you can get preggers sooner they won’t cover the prenatal visits either until the 15 months elapse.  The other carriers like Avmed, Blue Cross and Golden Rule have coinsurance and maximum benefits on their plans so you end up paying around $2-3000 for your entire pregnancy.  The other Florida health insurance companies like Aetna, Cigna and Humana don’t even offer Maternity coverage on their individual policies.

Now this paragraph is the money shot though as I am about to tell you what I (as a self employed individual health insurance statistic) am going to do when my wife (who has Vista) is going to do when we get pregnant.  We are not going to apply for Medicaid as I told you to do as we don’t qualify based on our income status, however we are going to pay cash for most of the early prenatal visits and because we are self employed and have a spare cooperation lying around I will most likely get a two man group within a couple months of delivery.  Of course, this might be crazy but even if I don’t get the group I will pay cash as I do not ever want to give $110 per month for a baby that I haven’t even considered yet as this would mean that I am budgeting for a person that I haven’t even met and what if I don’t like this person and I spent all this money before they even came to my house?

Ok that last part is silly but I am never going to give money to a health insurance company as this usually turns out to be a winning investment for the health insurance company otherwise they wouldn’t offer it to begin with.  Let me give you a better example, let say you need dental insurance as you have a ton of a cavities from drinking too much soda and eating too many lollypops and then you try to get a comprehensive individual dental plan.  You will find that no company gives dental benefits to individuals as the only people that would buy it would be people that drink too much soda and they would lose too much money.  But in a big company the risk is spread out to coffee drinkers and people that just stain their teeth instead of actually rotting them.  So as a side note never buy an individual dental plan and expect good benefits as they all are just discount plans.  Essentially, so is your maternity plan. (Unless you go with Vista and wait the 15 months)