More and more individual health insurance plans are cutting out maternity health insurance as part of their benefits package to save on costs.  This is extremely detrimental to new parents as health care costs continue to rise.  In California specifically, 82% of plans had maternity coverage seven years ago, but today that number has dropped all the way down to 13% according to the article “Bill Would Mandate Maternity Coverage in Individual Health Plans” on the California Healthline website.  This drop is staggering and means financial stress for pregnant women and their families.

Recent legislation in California has been proposed by Sen. Noreen Evans that would require all individual policies to maternity coverage.  The California Health Benefits Review Program estimates that this mandate would give coverage to 8574 pregnancies and affect about 2.9 million California residents.  This would mean slightly higher rates for policyholders and it’s estimated rates could rise by 3.5% each month as a result of more coverage.  If passed, this bill would be a jump start to health care reform which considers maternity coverage an essential benefit, but not until 2014.

There are opponents of the bill who believe individuals should have the option to buy lower priced health insurance policies if they choose to do so.  The insurance industry had previously opposed such legislation, but with health care reform upon us they have dropped any fights for the time being.  People who support this bill point out that maternity coverage is such a widely used benefit and the costs should be spread out to make it more affordable to those in need.

Written by Sam Tabes

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/smartshopper78