Health Insurance Was Never Intended to Pay for Birth

Why's it so hard to buy maternity coverage?

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As this article in the Colorado Independent points out, it is difficult to buy maternity coverage for individual health insurance, and most the time. It's not worth it.

Why??

The answer is very simple: Do you want to have a car accident? Would like cancer? Do you want your plane to crash? Do you want your house to burn down? Do you want to be sued? Do you want to die?

I'm assuming the answers to the above are, "NO"

Anybody want to have a baby??

For many the answer to having a baby is "YES"

The whole concept of insurance, is to protect against things that might happen, but you don't want to happen. In most cases, maternity coverage protects against something you want to happen.

Insurance actuaries go nuts when asked to calculate desirable risk as opposed to undesirable risk. Had normal maternity coverage never been included in health insurance, then I believe that our entire system of labor and delivery would have evolved differently.

What many of you don't realize is that “complications of pregnancy”, which usually meant needing a cesarean section, was always covered by your policy, EVEN it had no maternity coverage.

I guess times have changed.

Alan.
Alan@birthconference.org