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!!