Simply having had a C-section in the past can deny one from obtaining individual health insurance:
She was turned down because she had given birth by Caesarean section. Having the operation once increases the odds that it will be performed again, and if she became pregnant and needed another Caesarean, Golden Rule did not want to pay for it. A letter from the company explained that if she had been sterilized after the Caesarean, or if she were over 40 and had given birth two or more years before applying, she might have qualified.
Related posts:
- Over half of births in China are C-sections
- RIP VBAC?
- A 15-year-old performs a C-section
- Rising childbirth deaths and C-sections
- Individual mandates for health insurance
- My take: Preventive medicine, Rhode Island, C-sections
- C-sections to get into private school
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In the individual market, they’ll deny you for dandruff or the diaper rash you had in infancy.
The company named in the article is most notorious for that.
Of course it’s self-imposed from all the mandates thrown on insurers.
Strip off the mandates, or even better, pass the Shadegg bill so you can shop for health policies across state lines. That would go a long way to fix the problem.
This was never a problem for us after a c-section for our first born–because we never lived in a state that required us to have maternity coverage. Back in the old days when men were free, etc, we bought the insurance we needed and could afford, and planed for modest and predictable expenses. The fact is that pregnancy is predictable and can be financially planned for if there are not unexpected complications–and c-sections are far to common to consider an unexpected complication that couldn’t be planned for.
The problem isn’t the insurance company. It is in the business of managing risk and in the face of unnecessary government mandates is doing so in the only way left to it.
Most c-sections performed in the US are unnecessary. It is better for the health of the mother and baby to have a natural birth. C-sections are often “unnecessary medicine.”
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