HELP - health insurance before getting pregnant in VA (HMO or PPO)??

[Anonymous]

I am looking into different individual health care plans, and I have been looking at Carefirst HMO plan which includes maternity without an extra fee on top of the premium. Anyone has any advice on whether an HMO plan is best to go through pregnancy or is PPO better, considering it will be an individual plan, and not linked with an employer. Anyone has had HMO Carefirst BlueChoice HSA 1200? Was it good? Are there any hidden costs that the insurance company has not been clear about? What would you recommend? Thank you!

[Anonymous]

or simply if you had experience with carefirst hmo during pregnancy, please share. is it worth the lower cost?

[Anonymous]

One thing to watch out for is if you are committed to a hospital birth - if you aren't, probably an HMO won't cover it.

[Anonymous]

Personally, I prefer PPOs over HMOs because I don't like the concept of having to go to a primary care physician just to get a referral to a specialist.

[Anonymous]

Many of the plans have a 6 month waiting period on pregnacy, which means they will not cover any pregnancy-related claims if the pregnancy started in the first 6 months of buying the policy.

I have Kaiser and got it when I was planning on getting pregnant. They do not have the waiting period and there is no co-pay for maternity visits. I had to pay a percentage of testing and the hospital stay, but everything else was covered. It was also nice to have everything in the same building. They also have nurse practitioners. I had the same one during my entire pregnancy. It was a random OB that did the delivery, but I thought he was great. I got lucky and could not have picked a better OB if I tried.