If you are reading this post, you are probably desperate. First off, congratulations on your pregnancy! I hope my story will help you save money on your maternity bills if you don’t have maternity coverage.
In April 2007 I found myself pregnant. I called my insurance first to find out if they covered pregnancy. The answer was ‘no’. Then after calling numerous insurance companies I found that pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and none of them could cover me, since I was already pregnant.
I started to get worried. We have a baby on the way and we will have to pay for the doctor, labs, hospital ourselves! How much will it be? Where are we going to get the money? What if there are complications?
My husband is self-employed and I wasn’t working at the time. We had individual insurance plan through a major insurance carrier. The only way they would cover pregnancy is if I had maternity coverage before I got pregnant or if we had group insurance through the business.
I didn’t even know that we could get a group insurance plan. In our state of Florida, a business is qualified for the group insurance as long as it has a minimum of two employees who need insurance. My husband would have to add me to his payroll in order for us to be qualified for a group insurance plan. Would it be the cheapest way to go? Find out here.
One of the big mistakes we made is, we signed up for Maternity Card. They promised that they will help us reduce our maternity bills by negotiating with the providers. After paying them $700, we realized that it was a scam and they currently have a class action lawsuit against them filed by the state of Texas. They did give us our money back eventually, but it took a lot of my nerves and back and forth negotiations.
Doctor’s Bills
In the meantime I started calling OBGYN doctors in the area to find out their pricing. Apparently they have different rates for the insured and the uninsured customers. If you don’t have maternity insurance, tell them upfront that you will do ‘cash-pay’. They will quote you a price for their maternity package. It usually includes all of the doctor’s visits and delivery. Here you will learn more about all of the important financial questions to ask a doctor before signing up with them.
Lab Bills
The doctor will require you to do some lab work during your pregnancy. Some tests are required and many are optional. Obviously, in order to avoid extra costs, just refuse the optional tests. Usually the doctor won’t tell you which tests are optional or required, so it’s up to you to find that out before they do the test.
Find out how you can do some required tests for free or at a very low cost here.
Hospital Bills
When I was about five months pregnant I went to the hospital for registration. During registration, tell them that you don’t have maternity insurance and you will do ’self-pay’. They will quote you a price that will include delivery and hospital stay. Sometimes hospital will give you a discount as long as you prepay by the n-th month of your pregnancy.
Keep in mind that this package does not include any other services like the specialists, anesthesiologist or pediatrician. If you are planning on getting pain reducing drugs during labor, you will require anesthesiologist. It Anesthesiologist’s services are quite pricey, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be in pain while in labor so you can avoid paying anesthesiologist. Trust me, when you’re in labor pain, you won’t care! But you can significantly reduce your specialists’ bills by using techniques I describe here.
One more tip, make sure you are in true labor before you rush to the hospital. If you show up thinking you are in labor and the hospital doesn’t admit you, you still have to pay. We had it happened to us and it cost us $500. Learn here how you can avoid this expense.
And finally, do you want to know right now how much your pregnancy is going to cost you and the options available to you? Do you want to gain instant access to the information that’s going to resolve the financial uncertainties you have and give you a piece of mind right now? Learn about it here!
In any case, I wish you happy and healthy pregnancy, as well as quick and easy labor!!
For affiliate information for my product please visit http://lowerpregnancybills.com/affiliate/ . This link can also be found on the bottom of the sales page.
on Jan 5th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
THANK YOU!!!
First off – Investigating to-good-to-be-true fraudulent MaternityCard (sorry you had to go through all that just to warn us!) was how we found your story.
How you handled the minefield of your husband being self employed and having insurance – but not having the maternity coverage is exactly what we’re going through right now.
Again, thank you for posting such a wealth of information and experience and please give our love to your family!
on Apr 29th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Thanks for the information! You give a lot of great tips. I wish I had done the AIDS test the way you did.
I am in the EXACT same boat this time – I am SAHM to 2, DH is self-employed and we have non-maternity, individual insurance. In Illinois they are only required to cover complications – which they did with my 2nd baby due to breech position. With my first child, I was working for “the man” in big pharma and paid a whopping total of $75 for the whole thing.
I have felt frustrated by Quest because they will not negotiate one penny of a discount if you are self-pay. I didn’t know they were actually cheaper than anyone. I still need to find the anesthesiologist information out with a month to go in my pregnancy and see if they will help me out.
My doc is doing a c-section (repeat) for $2500 and that includes all my visits. He has been great about this – when I told him directly, he had the staff reduce his charge more than they were going to do without his go-ahead.
The hospital offers a flat 30% discount to everyone who is self pay – I am wondering if I can somehow get them lower. They quote me 8-16K for their end of things before the 30% discount – quite a range! And they don’t tell me what I can do to get the lower end of that. I KNOW for a fact from my last one that they billed the insurance 12k and discounted it by 65%!!! Why can’t I have closer to that?
I hate all the penalties in the “system” for the little guy.
Thanks for your post – it makes me feel less “alone”.
on May 5th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Thank you so MUCH! I have spent nearly an entire day worrrying about how my fiance and I were going to pay for our impending pregnancy bills. I am a full time college student with no insurance his insurance will cover me for a very high amount but we are unsure of what to do. I had come across the Maternity Card earlier today and thought wow this is jsut perfect. But thankfully I came across your story before it was to late. My OB-GYN knows my self pay status and said that we will need to pay $1500 on our first appointment which isn’t a problem. Thank you for reminding me to check with the anesthiologist as well.
on May 23rd, 2009 at 5:44 am
Thank you so much for your story. My wife and I just got pregnant and she is without any type of insurance at the moment.
Would I be able to add her onto my plan (which doesn’t cover maternity), to cover lab costs and such, or does her pregnancy, since is’t s preexisting condition, waive her from getting any type of new insurance?
In order words, can she still get insurance now knowing she won’t qualify for ones that offer maternity?
Thanks so much for everything!
on May 24th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Hi Pat,
I am not sure if your wife can get regular insurance if she is currently pregnant.
I have individual insurance through United Healthcare and I had it before I got pregnant. When I got pregnant I called them regarding the pregnancy to find out what is covered and what is not. They told me that anything related to pregnancy is not covered, but any complications that might be acquired from pregnancy or delivery are covered.
If your wife doesn’t have any insurance I recommend you go to United Healthcare website uhc.com or call 1-888-545-5205. They should tell you more about what you can do.
Good luck!
Malika
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Hi Malika,
I think a lot of women will be interested in this type of information! Luckily, I’m not in a position where I have to worry about insurance with this baby.
However, I was wondering if you have an affiliate program set up for your ebook? If you do, I’d be happy to do a little write up about your ebook on my blog because I know a lot of women struggle with how to pay their maternity bills.
Chrystal
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Dear Chrystal,
I’m glad you inquired about the affiliate program. I am currently in the process of putting the product on the Clickbank.com. It will take me a few days. I also found a glitch in the payment system with the service that I’m currently using, thanks to your inquiry.
I am definitely going to have an affiliate program set up very soon. I will put this info on my blog and I can email you as well when it’ll be ready.
Malika
on May 25th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Thank you for the information. My husband is also self-employed and we are switching insurances to one that does not offer maternity coverage. It’s good to know we have other options. I find it obsurd that it is so hard to find maternity coverage. It should be offered with every insurance plan and you shouldn’t have to wait a whole year in order to be covered.