Health insurance also called health coverage or a health plan helps you pay for medical care. After the Affordable Care Act also called ACA passed, health care law requires all insurance plans on the Health Insurance Marketplace also called Marketplace or Medicaid to cover many services for pregnant women.
The Marketplace is an online resource that helps you find and compare health plans in your state. These insurance plans cover services for pregnant women including:. Insurance plans in the Marketplace and Medicaid have to cover these services for everyone, including pregnant women:.
Each plan has a summary that includes the expected costs of pregnancy care. You can find plan summaries in the Health Insurance Marketplace. This is an online resource that helps you find and compare health plans in your state. If you are working, you may also have health insurance through your employer. Check with your employer to learn about the plan summary and benefits.
You can be pregnant when you sign up for health insurance. If this happens, pregnancy is called a pre-existing condition. This means you had the condition you were pregnant before you sign up for health insurance.
In most states, many pregnant women can get Medicaid coverage. Medicaid is a government program that provides free or low-cost health insurance to people with low income. Get expert tips and resources from March of Dimes and CDC to increase your chance of having a healthy, fully-term pregnancy and baby. BabyLiveAdvice lets you tap into a virtual network of nurses, midwives, lactation consultants, nutritionists and health professionals for support when you need it most.
Create a Facebook fundraiser to let friends and family know you're donating your birthday so more babies can have theirs. Advocates have been pushing to make pregnancy a qualifying event in every state.
HHS has considered it, but clarified in early that they had decided against making pregnancy a qualifying event. Louise Norris is an individual health insurance broker who has been writing about health insurance and health reform since She has written dozens of opinions and educational pieces about the Affordable Care Act for healthinsurance. Her state health exchange updates are regularly cited by media who cover health reform and by other health insurance experts.
We do not sell insurance products, but this form will connect you with partners of healthinsurance. You may submit your information through this form, or call to speak directly with licensed enrollers who will provide advice specific to your situation. Read about your data and privacy. The mission of healthinsurance. Learn more about us. Obamacare changes everything The ACA has been a game-changer for individual health insurance, and maternity coverage is one of the areas where the changes are most pronounced.
Pregnancy Insurance. How to Get Pregnancy Insurance Under the Affordable Care Act, there have been many changes regarding health insurance, including pregnancy insurance. Options for Managing costs with no maternity insurance Some additional ways to help you manage costs related to prenatal care and labor include: If you are delivering at a hospital, you can contact their accounting office to see if you can set up a payment plan or to find out if they offer a sliding scale.
If you do not have a high-risk pregnancy, consider giving birth at a birthing center. Many birthing centers also provide sliding scales, payment plans, and are willing to accept Medicaid. Want to Know More? Can I get pregnant if…? Share this post:. Share on facebook Facebook. Share on twitter Twitter. Share on linkedin LinkedIn. Share on email Email. Similar Post. This is to ensure that in times of need, all persons have access to quality health services and are shielded from the financial burdens of health care expenses [ 3 ].
In recent decades, several low-and middle-income countries LMICs have made substantial efforts to achieve this objective by introducing a number of Social Health Protection SHP pre-payment systems that seek to minimize dependency on out-of-pocket payments. Ghana has emerged in sub-Saharan Africa as a leader of these health financing reforms, being the first country in the sub-region to introduce a National Health Insurance Scheme NHIS [ 4 , 5 ].
The Government of Ghana launched the NHIS-an initiative to provide health insurance to everyone by removing the out-of-pocket payment hurdle in and this became fully operational in [ 5 , 6 ].
Health care services were paid for predominantly via consumer fees also referred to as cash-and-carry prior to the implementation of this program but this arrangement disenfranchised the impoverished and disadvantaged from accessing healthcare [ 7 , 8 ]. Funding for the scheme mainly comes from a 2. In fact, all nationals must register for insurance, although those who do not register will not be punished.
For certain vulnerable groups, including the elderly defined as those over 70 , people under 18, and pregnant women and their newborns, the NHIS is provided free of charge.
These include high blood pressure, severe persistent nausea, vomiting and gestational diabetes [ 12 ]. Dealing with these complications will impose an economic burden on pregnant women in LMICs such as Ghana, which can lead to serious health complications. Despite the NHIS premium exemptions for pregnant women, unavailability of health facilities, travel cost to health facilities, perceived quality of service, travel cost to NHIS registration centres and socio-cultural factors have been found to be associated with low enrollment [ 13 ].
It is also found that the quality of health services provided by health institutions is poor, and factors such as long waiting times, poor attitudes of health institution staff, and shortage of drugs, are all contributing to low enrollment rate of NHIS [ 11 , 14 ]. Others have also investigated the retention of subscribers [ 23 ], reducing medical claims cost [ 24 ], sustainability of the scheme [ 25 ], equity in accessibility [ 26 , 27 , 28 ], variation in coverage [ 29 ], quality healthcare assessment [ 30 ] and trends in subscription [ 13 ].
Despite comprehensive research on the NHIS, none of these studies have, to the best of our knowledge, focused on the position of women as to whether NHIS is helping pregnant women in accessing health services or not. It is against this background and the gap in the literature that this study seeks to test the hypothesis that NHIS is helping pregnant women in accessing health services by using the current nationally representative data— Ghana Demographic and Health Survey GDHS.
Outcome of this study is anticipated to inform and strengthen the need for pregnant women to subscribe to the NHIS which can help in the reduction of maternal mortality cases, improve maternal and child health and contribute to the attainment of the SDG 3. We used data from the women recode file of the GDHS. This is the sixth version since the survey started in Ghana in Two stage sample design was carried out. The initial stage involved the selection of clusters constituting the enumeration areas EAs.
The enumeration areas emerged from urban and rural locations across all the ten regions at the time. The second phase involved the selection of 11, households from the EAs and this resulted in a total sample of women aged 15— The survey had For the purpose of our study, women with complete data were included.
The dependent variable was whether the NHIS is helping pregnant women for health services or not. The question was posed to women aged 15—49 during the GDHS. This variable was chosen on the premise that one of the priorities of the pro-poor NHIS in Ghana is to ease the financial burden in accessing maternity services [ 32 ].
As a result, investigating the perception of women on whether this mandate is being achieved is essential for future health financing policy directions.
Eight independent variables were included in this study. Of these, the main independent variable was health insurance subscription. The other included variables were Age 15—19,,,30—,,45—49 , education No education, primary, secondary, tertiary , residence rural,urban , antenatal care ANC visits Below 4 Visits, At least 4 Visits , current pregnancy status pregnant, not pregnant and region Western, Central, Greater Accra, Volta, Eastern, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper East, Upper West and wealth quintile poorest, poorer, middle, richer, richest.
Principal component analysis was used to transform these variables into wealth index by placing individual households on a continuous measure of relative wealth. The DHS segregates households into five wealth quintiles; poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest. These variables have been reported as essential for investigating NHIS [ 33 , 34 ]. Stata version 13 was used to analyse the data using both descriptive and inferential statistics.
In our descriptive analysis, we computed the proportion of women in each of the aforementioned independent variables.
Chi-square tests were conducted in order to ascertain the independent variables that had significant association with the dependent variable.
This analytical approach was the most suitable option premised on the fact that our dependent variable had two outcomes. The first model Model I accounted for NHIS subscription and whether it helps pregnant women in accessing health services. In model two, we adjusted for the effect of ANC visit-as a woman needs to first access healthcare during pregnancy in order to know whether the NHIS helps in healthcare during pregnancy or otherwise.
All the seven significant independent variables were fitted in the final model Model III after which post-estimation test Linktest was conducted to determine whether the model is devoid of model specification error and also to ensure that relevant variables have not been omitted. Multicollinearity was also checked and we found no evidence of multicollinearity. Samples were weighted to adjust for the sample design. Table 1 presents the results on background characteristics and whether NHIS is helping pregnant women to access health services.
Nearly half of the women More than half Seventeen percent were in the Ashanti region, The majority Ninety percent Table 2 presents the logistic regression results on whether the NHIS is helping pregnant women to access health services or not. The purpose of the study was to examine whether NHIS helps women to access health services during pregnancy.
This confirms that NHIS is heping women to access health services. The findings support the findings of Singh et al.
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