You have my sympathy! I have had quite a few headaches with insurance and maternity care!
With our first, maternity wasn’t covered and so I was very worried at first (we didn’t have a job either when we found out we were pregnant!) but we worked out a pre-payment plan with the hospital and the dr (ended up being similar or less than what I have paid for other babies with insurance).
Another issue I had with two other babies was that we traveled with dh for work, so we would be several months in a rented home away from home. Well, I was pregnant with one of my kids and we were going to be gone for several months, but back home sometime before my due date. I couldn’t find any OB Gyn willing to take me. One even told me flat out the legal risk was too high for them (they wouldn’t be there for delivery, but were liable because they had been involved in prenatal care). The dept of health (here and there) said they couldn’t help. I finally found this old school, older OB (bow tie and all) that was kind enough to take me. The only one. When I went back to my regular home I still had to pay my original OB the full fee as if I had been there the whole time.
I did have that situation again in a different place and once again had to pay full cost even if I had paid for prenatal care elsewhere for half the pregnancy. The global fee I pay with my regular OB includes 1 ultrasound, but I was in the second location when it was time for the ultrasound, so I paid for it separately. When I got back home, my dr. had me have an ultrasound as well. I figured it would be part of the global fee since they include 1 in their fee, but no, the insurance forced them to charge me for it. They told me they would have expected for it to be the one ultrasound in their fee, but the insurance requires that they file everything and the insurance said I owed money for that ultrasound. Ugh, I wasn’t happy, but I ended up paying it (it wasn’t too expensive after all, but the principle of it upset me… the one ultrasound I had paid for in the global fee went unused, and I had to pay for two other ones separately)…
A different time my employers insurance changed while pregnant. I went from in network to out of network the last month of my pregnancy. It was very stressful because they could not guarantee that I wouldn’t end up paying out of network (very high) rates for my whole pregnancy or at least for my delivery (which is the major cost). It ended up working out (we never figured out if my OB turned out to be in network, or if they gave us a special permission, but they counted it as in-network).
Now… everything has worked out one way or another. We have been blessed with 7 sweet kiddos out of all of this. I think most of them wouldn’t be here if we would have waited for the perfect time, or the best situation. That being said, November is just around the corner
Even if you were to get pregnant soon, are you expecting to have thousands of dollars of treatment done in the first 1-2.5 months of prenatal care, or just concerned about the possibility? Have you consulted anyone to see what happens if you are pregnant and switch insurance in the first few months?
