Colorado Health Insurance

Hello,

You have a unique situation.  There are some Colorado Laws in place that should protect your right to have maternity coverage under your "group" benefit plan.  , Scott Erickson, our group benefits specialist, will be commenting soon about a specific law that requires all "group" benefit plans to include coverage for maternity. This law may make your employer liable for your maternity expenses should your wife become pregnant while your employer is paying for your health insurance indirectly via an HRA, even if the healthplan you chose does not have maternity coverage.  This is a gray area in the law that leaves employers with a potential for a lawsuit against them by choosing to pay for employee's individual health insurance indirectly via an HRA instead of offering group health insurance to his/her employees.  Again, I have asked Scott to post specific details about this when he gets a chance.   We often warn our clients about this specific situation when advising them about setting up HRAs.  Scott is very adament against using HRAs for the purpose of funding premiums for employees to use for their own personal insurance just because of this specific kind of situation!

But, to answer your question about Assurant Health...Assurant Health, in my opinion, provides the best maternity coverage option available within the personal health insurance market in the State of Colorado.  You might consider combining the One Deductible HSA Compatible plan with a maternity option, so that you can save money in a tax-deductible HSA account to plan for future, out of pocket, maternity expenses.  The average childbirth costs approx. 10-12K.  You could combine the One Deductible plan with a $5K deductible maternity plan.  The 5K deductible maternity plan only costs approx. $15/mo.  Once the plan is in effect, open a health savings account (HSA) so you can save money on a tax-deductible basis, over time, to pay for the $5k deductible on the maternity plan.  The insurance will pick up the rest of the cost.  That way, at least you are paying for your 5K deductible with tax-advantaged $$.  When you purchase any of the Assurant Health Maternity riders, you will have access to network discounted rates for prenatal, labor and delivery care.  Without adding the maternity option (any deductible) you lose the advantage of the network discounts that Assurant Health has already negotiated with OBGYN and labor and delivery providers. 

In the state of Colorado, your newborn baby is automatically covered, without any medical underwriting, at birth, IF you add the child to your existing healthplan within 30 days of birth, so you wouldn't have to worry about healthcare costs related to an unhealthy newborn if you did not have maternity coverage.   Your existing Blue Cross plan would have to accept your new baby, regardless of health status at the time of birth provided you contact the insurance company to add the baby within 30 days after it is born.   



-- Edited by Lynne Erickson on Wednesday 1st of July 2009 07:54:25 AM

The State of CO Division of Insurance (DORA) just recently sent us producers this announcement that the use of an HRA to reimburse health benefit premiums generally PROHIBITS the sale of medically underwritten individual benefit plans, except under the circumstances that the individual health insurance plan complies with all mandated benefits under the Colorado law for group health insurance plans.  As far as I know, there aren't currently ANY individual plans that comply with Colorado State Law for group insurance.  Here is the notice that we received on Friday, August 28th, 2009:

http://www.efsbenefits.com/Healthcare-Costs/DORA-HRA-And-Individual-Coverage.pdf