Health Insurance Articles
Women Who Have Undergone C-sections Required To Be Sterilized
2009-10-29
According to congressional testimony in front of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, some insurance companies have made it a practice to deny health insurance coverage to women on individual plans after they have delivered babies by means of cesarean section. Peggy Robertson of Centennial, Colo., who told her story to the committee, reported that her insurer offered her the option of a sterilization procedure, saying that if she were over 40, sterilized and had not given birth during the previous two years, they would be able to offer her coverage. She declined to take advantage of the offer and they refused to insure her.
The health insurance company's rationale lies in the fact that vaginal childbirth can be risky for women who have previously undergone a C-section delivery. In fact, some hospitals don't even allow these women to attempt a vaginal birth. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found a slightly higher risk of complications during pregnancies after a C-section had been performed. These risks include rupture of the uterus, infection of the uterine lining, damage to the infant's brain and even infant death. The risks associated with repeated C-sections are also elevated relative to the statistics for women who have never undergone the procedure. This explains the insurance company's unwillingness to offer health insurance coverage if there was any possibility that the woman would deliver another child.
It is common for health insurance companies to charge more for policies extended to women than to men - especially women of childbearing years. In Connecticut, a small business can pay more than two and a half times as much to insure a woman between the ages to 25 and 29 than they would pay for a policy for a male of the same age. The rationale for this discrepancy lies in the potential added expense of a woman becoming pregnant or encountering other gynecological issues. Women of child bearing age seeking individual policies often cannot find any coverage at all, or if they do, the terms of their policies cover little or none of the cost of expenses associated with pregnancy and childbirth.
Democratic senator Barbara A Mikulski of Maryland, who has been working on health care reform legislation, was outraged by the testimony, and called the insurers' behavior "morally repugnant." Robertson's testimony highlighted the need for a health care reform bill that would prevent health insurance companies from discriminating against potential customers on the basis of pre-existing conditions - especially something as routine and unavoidable as having undergone a C-section.
