Hi, we are adoptive parents planning to adopt a baby girl due next month (9/20). the bmom lives in missouri and has health insurance under her mom’s coverage. we live in ca. By Missouri law, the child of the dependent does not get automatic coverage, so we would have to foot the bill for our baby;s birth and hospital stay. Because we are covered under Kaiser Permanente, and bmom is not giving birth at a KP facility, our insurance will not cover the baby’s expenses. Does anyone have any suggestions or knowledge about this type of situation? We are happy to cover for a well-baby’s normal stay, but if there are any complications, it can be tens or thousands of dollars. Any prior knowledge or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Anyone know how to get our insurance to pay for potential complications?
– August 10, 2012Posted in: Community Wisdom
Hi poster, I think this is a question for your lawyer. But I did want to caution that unless you have already adopted a child, you are NOT adoptive parents. You are hopeful parents or pre-adoptive parents. Also the pregnant mom is NOT a birth mother; she is an expectant mother. She may be planning to place the child and she may go through with it but until those papers are signed, she is that baby’s mother and you are not adoptive parents.
These kinds of semantics are important both because language can be coercive (by calling a woman a birth mom before she’s given birth it’s a way of erasing her valid status as mother) and because it can set hopeful adoptive parents up for a level of entitlement that can harm the future relationship if the adoption goes through.
Back to the question at hand, again I’d encourage you to talk to a lawyer familiar with interstate adoption and insurance policies.
Check into whether the child is eligible for a medical card under MO law. In IL, at least, once surrenders are signed, the child technically becomes a ward of the state and is PLACED with you for adoption (with the State, through agency oversight) being the legal guardian until finalization, which normally occurs roughly 6 months later (after post-placement visits, etc. to ensure the health, welfare, and best interests of the child in the adoption). In the interim (surrenders-finalization), the child is eligible for and is put on a medical card based upon the “ward” status. The medical card takes time to process, but normally will backpay up to 90 days any expenses, including the baby-specific hospital expenses. I cannot say, however, how it would work, if it was an interstate adoption (such as yours), where the baby will ultimately leave the state after ICPC is granted but before finalization. He/she MAY still be eligible for state medical card assistance under MO law since the MO agency who “takes guardianship” of him/her will likely retain that guardianship until finalization, even if he is residing out of state. Now, I don’t know what, if any, effects that would have on baby’s treatment/care in CA…. or if it would effect anything with your insurance being a primary. But, it’s worth checking into. We didn’t realize our son would be on a medical card until after his birth – and it made things a LOT easier with regard to the hospital! Good luck!
My health insurance covered 80% of my pregnancy/delivery costs and I applied for State medical to cover the rest so that my son’s potential adoptive parents would not be burdened with any of those costs. (I didn’t want to add any more than necessary to the financial stress of the home that I was potentially going to send my son into). The state coverage applied to all of his hospital expenses and anything above and beyond what my insurance covered.
However, that being said, the state coverage will be based on the expecting mom’s income, not yours. So it will depend largely on whether or not she qualifies. It may be a tender/inappropriate subject for you to bring up with her but as Dawn said – your lawyer can bridge that gap and has the legal knowledge to go with it.
Also, it is possible that she needs to call her insurance and “apply” in some way to have her expected child added to her plan. Women give birth everyday in Missouri and choose to parent…I can’t imagine that none of them have their child on their insurance plan. There has to be some kind of process for getting coverage for the baby.
Best of luck to all of you! Insurance is a tricky thing, and even as great as my coverage was, I dealt with the insurance companies well into a year after my son was born, to get the hospital bills covered.