Maternity Health Insurance in California: At the Crossroads

Maternity health insurance will be changing in California starting on July 1st, 2012. On that date all health insurance plans in California will be required to provide maternity care. The insurance companies have yet to publicly state how they will approach this, but a few rumblings have been heard.

Blue Cross is rumored to simply add the maternity care to all existing plans, while changing the name of the new maternity plans, and grandfathering all existing plans that currently do not have maternity care. Blue Shield is rumored to be working on an entirely new portfolio of health plans.

Aetna is a company that may have the most interesting response to the maternity care mandate, because none of their plans currently offer maternity care. Will they add this to existing plans, will they create new plans, or will they exit the California individual health insurance marketplace?

Stay tuned for more.

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