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Starting in the fall, all new health plans must cover certain preventive screenings and other services for pregnant women at no additional cost to the patient. Those include folic acid supplements, which reduce the risk of neural tube defects in developing fetuses, and counseling to help pregnant women stop smoking. Medicaid will also begin to cover smoking cessation counseling and drug therapy for pregnant women.
This will have an impact on what we pay in health premium. Its great that there will be additional coverages for pregnancy that is currently excluded from most private individual health plans today. The Health Care Reform is making it mandatory that everyone has this coverage and that it does not add any additional cost to the insured for treatment. This is another aspect of Health Care Reform that has pro and cons. The positive is additional coverage that will not have additional cost for treatment. The negative is the premium will have to go up. The other negative is you will not have choices to opt out of that coverage if you don’t need it. If you are not planning on having any more children it would be nice to have the choice to opt out of that coverage and pay less in premium.
