What Is Maternity Insurance?

The plan of starting a family or having a baby is one of the most wonderful and astounding news for a couple or an individual. However, the expenses during pregnancy and child's birth can easily have the parent strapped for cash. Getting out of budget during pregnancy can jeopardize the good health of both the mother and the child. Fortunately, the availability of facilities like maternity insurance can ensure a healthy and safe birth.

The average cost of a natural vaginal child birth is between $5000 and $10000, including all the expenses. But complications like cesarean section, premature births and others can easily skyrocket the cost to $15000. Astounding, isn't it! You will have to pay all of that money from your pocket if you don't have insurance. Besides that this is the time when you are supposed to save money for your child's future schooling and nurturing.

Maternity insurance is insurance for mothers expecting a baby. There are different types, including complete and partial insurance. In complete insurance the fees of hospitalization, physician's appointments, prescriptions, drugs, lab tests, delivery, anesthesia and even cesarean section, in case of complications, are covered. While partial insurance depend on the fund provider, it may only cover hospitalization and physicians fees.

There are health insurance policies that covers maternity expenses as well. These are known as maternity health insurance. Although such insurance is more expensive, it relieves you of the pressure of getting another insurance. Maternity health insurance may also be of different types, including partial and complete.

The third and the best type of such insurance is a group insurance covering all the expenses during pregnancy. Such benefits are offered by employers as employee benefit and are known as EI (Employee insurance). These cover the whole cost of health care of a family. Although, every employer should offer such benefits there are many who don't.

When should you get insured? Well this is something that matters a lot. This is because most of maternity fund providers want you to get insured six months or more, before a pregnancy is detected. For this reason many insurances comes with a waiting period of six months or more, while others demands proofs that you are not pregnant at the time of signing the insurance.

In cases the mother is already pregnant and does not have any insurance yet, there are other plans and offers that might help. Such plans are more expensive but cover about the same expenses. Therefore, it is wise to get insured in hand, because things could get serious without insurance.