As I wrote yesterday, Jennifer and I are planning to have a kid. One of the major outstanding issues was how insurance would handle this. I was relieved to confirm that our health insurance would cover emergency contingencies related to delivery (after the deductible). Moreover, we have 30 days to add a newborn to our plan, and the child is covered from birth.
We have a high-deductible plan with Assurant that costs us $148.16 per month (for both of us). We don’t expect our insurance to cover any of our routine or moderate-cost care; that’s why the premium is relatively low. Instead, we save the maximum allowable in our Health Savings Account, which is pre-tax money. We already have ample funds in our HSA to cover a routine delivery at Mountain Midwifery.
But, as Tracy Ryan, the owner of the facility, warned us yesterday, in a minority of cases a woman may need an expensive C-section, and the infant may need expensive intensive care. The worst-case scenario could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Our family deductible is $10,000 per year. So, given our insurance covers delivery emergencies, that’s the maximum bill we’re looking at, and by then we’ll have more than that in our HSA.
Assurant also gave me an estimated premium to add a newborn: a family total of $202.69 per month. While decades of political controls have mostly destroyed the market in health insurance, that’s a premium I can live with. The big question for us is whether and how long ObamaCare will allow my high-deductible insurance to exist.
Blog housekeeping: I’m adding a “family” label for posts related to pregnancy and children. I use “PPC” — for People’s Press Collective — for posts on politics. I’ll use a “home” label for everything pertaining to food and the household. I’ll also use a “religion” label.