Gestational Surrogate’s Diary
Surrogacy Health Insurance. Gestational surrogacy video diary about choosing a surrogate mother who does not have health insurance, and the four different options intended parents face.
Transcript of Surrogacy Health Insurance
Hi Rayven Perkins here fromInformation-on-Surrogacy.com,and I’d like to welcome you back to the next installment of my surrogacy video diaries. This video is all about surrogacy health insurance.
This series documents my fourth and final journey as a surrogate mother. Now, we’ve just confirmed our match with Rachel and John and the next thing I want to talk to you about is the fact that during this journey we do not have health insurance that will cover the surrogacy. When you do not have health insurance, there are four different options that you can take when proceeding with surrogacy.
The first option is before you’re pregnant you actually go out and find a health insurance policy.
The problem with most of these policies is that it’s going to be pretty expensive, sometimes just as expensive as paying cash for a journey to begin with.
For example, I started looking into obtaining health insurance and I found that the premiums were going to be around $450 a month.
I have to have policy for at least two months prior to conception, and it wasn’t clear if conception was going to be the actual date of the transfer or if it was going to go two weeks back from my last menstrual period. This could’ve made a difference with this situation as we were less than two months out for the transfer to begin with.
Now after the costs were factored, there was also the fact that I was trying to obtain information on the policy, because I had to make sure that surrogacy was not excluded. But, the insurance company would not give me the exclusions until after I have paid them. And it becomes this horrible Catch 22; I kept asking for the exclusions, for the member’s handbook, and the insurance company told me that I couldn’t have it until I was a member, which kinda didn’t make sense to me.
I talked with my lawyer and my attorney said “Don’t bother going through that particular company to get insurance, that company nearly always excludes surrogacy anyways, and you’re just going to have lot of trouble.” So we decided in the end that getting an insurance policy was not going to be the right option for this journey.
The second option is to pay cash straight out for all your services.
For the most part, that’s going to be a payment straight to your doctor, your OB/GYN which runs around $3000 depending on what area of the country you are in.
You’ll need to call your OBGYN and find out the rates.
You’re also going to have to pay out of pocket for all the ultrasounds, all the blood work, lab work everything like that.
You’ll also have the cost of the hospital for your delivery which ranges from $2,000 to $3,500 dollars or more depending on if you have a regular delivery, a planned c-section, or an emergency c-section.
There could be costs to take into consideration depending on what happens during your hospital stay. Add another $1000 or so for the anesthesiologist if you are going to get one.
So add all these things up and it comes out to around $7,000-8,000 dollars. This could end up a little less or a little more. This seemed like a decent option for us because after you factor in the deductibles and the cost of the insurance policy to begin with, it broke about even.
The third option would be a pay to cash for most things but to add a surrogacy rider policy on there, which helps out with complications only. That would be anything other than a basic visit to your OBGYN or anything that would normally happen in a normal pregnancy.
The problem with this kind of option is a surrogacy rider can easily cost $5,000-6,000 to begin with, with a deductible of around $5,000. So you are more than $10,000 in before you could even use it. But it can be good option for a worst-case scenario, such as, you get pregnant with quadruplets and end up on bed rest in the hospital for six months. That might be something you would wish you had if you don’t have any insurance whatsoever.
But we’ve actually decided to go with option number four, which is to use a medical discount program. The program that I used can be found right here on my website. I’ve got links up right underneath this video for everyone to see. The program cost $50 a month. It is cheaper than paying cash straight out.
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It will save me between 20 and 80 percent off the cash price. For my doctor’s costs it will probably be around the 20 percent off, but for lab fees and the ultrasounds it will be more substantial savings. The amount saved really depends on your area and what providers are available.
And the hospital bill itself will be handled by the advocacy program after the visit is done. They’ll go in and then negotiate a better than cash rate for us to be able to use the hospital facilities. And so we looked at all of these options and we found that the medical discount card was probably the best option in our situation.
Worst-case scenario, something catastrophic happens and I do end up in the hospital on some sort of complication we do have the advocacy program that can actually reduce the bill down to zero, if necessary, depending on the circumstances. Best case scenario we don’t need to use it at all.
So I’m really comfortable with that decision versus getting an insurance policy. Of course, you know, using a surrogate mother that already has insurance policy that does not exclude surrogacy would be your best option but sometimes going with somebody that is more experienced or going with a family member or close friend or just somebody that you get along with better makes more sense.
It’s not always about money. A lot of time, this is about the relationship you have with your surrogate mother. The money part can be handled.
Related Surrogacy Health Insurance Pages
- Who Pays for Insurance
- Common Insurance Questions
- Obtaining Surrogate Health Insurance
- Surrogacy Insurance Myths by Lynlee Weber
- About State Funded Insurance
- Discount Cards and Plans
