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Thursday, June 07, 2012

I'm A Dude. Why Is My Health Insurance Adding Maternity Coverage?

Steven has health insurance through Anthem Blue Cross, a company that deals in direct-pay individual policies, instead of employer-subsidized group health insurance. A recent change to the plan adds a service, maternity coverage. (Yes, many direct-pay plans require you to buy insurance covering pregnancy and delivery separately, and before you get pregnant.) The problem? If he and his wife want to have a baby, he's going to have to carry and give birth to it. The maternity coverage only applies to the policyholder, not their spouse or dependents. Pretty sweet if you're a fertile woman with her own policy. Pretty useless if you're not.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm a dude, too. Yesterday got a notice from Coventry that they are adding birth control, pregnancy care, breast exams and stuff like that to my policy. I wrote back and explained how I could save them a bunch of money by volunteering to do breast exams for their clients for free.