Being Pregnant and Uninsured: The Difficulties
Being pregnant is never simple. Being pregnant without insurance is significantly harder. The frustrating thing is that no one wants to go uninsured if they have a choice about it, and often women become pregnant unintentionally, so the fair conclusion would be that health insurance companies would be tolerant of uninsured pregnant women.
Wrong.
In reality Obtaining insurance for pregnant women is very hard. Why? The ‘formal’ reason is because the pregnancy is viewed as a preexisting condition, a reason that causes a lot of people to struggle to get health coverage (for example, if someone has Alzheimer, getting health coverage and does not possess insurance might prove to be virtually impossible as well).
On one hand, it is easy to understand the insurance company’s perspective: nine months of pregnancy can cost quite a fortune: visits to the doctor, standard screenings, the risk of complications and not to mention the delivery itself. However, pregnancy is a natural fact of life, and in this day and age we should expect that there be laws assisting women get health insurance if they discover they are pregnant and do not possess health insurance.
Unfortunately, this is not the case - there is no federal law requiring insurance companies to help women in this situation. Many women would not even request for a low cost medical insurance but would compromise for whatever they can get - but alas, even that is not a trivial task.
The good news is that there are several programs that offer maternity insurance for women, as well as programs that are insurance-like (which cover the entire pregnancy and delivery) - essentially, these are sufficient.
In our site, The Guide to Health, we offer a couple of articles that elaborate on the options available for women in this situation as well as offer links to one such a program. Hopefully, you, the reader, possess health insurance and pregnant - but if you are, this site can really help you.