請教保險的問題！

我買的是 Blue Cross California 的個人保險，懷孕後才知道這個保險不保 maternity 的。孕期一切費用我們都自己掏錢付了。希望生產時一切順利，盡量節省一些。

現在寶寶預產期隻有5周了，需要趕快給寶寶買好保險。我現在的 plan 居然不能保寶寶出生的那個月。我老公也沒有保險，正好可以買一個家庭保險，等寶寶出生後，把寶寶加進去。

今天上網查，發現要申請新保險，表上寫了懷孕的人是沒有資格的填的。我平時就不懂保險行業的各種用語，電話上問也問不清楚.以前都是跟學校買的保險。老公說找個 insurance broker／agent 來幫忙。希望可以有所幫助。

這裏想問的是，健康的寶寶一年的(保險前)醫療費用大概是多少？保險有好多種，不同的 premium, deductible... 我都搞不清楚。比如，每月付$970，每年deductible $500。或者，每月$350，每年 deductible $5000。我覺得都好貴，不知哪種更合情理。

有經驗的 JMs 請幫忙建議一下。謝謝。

[mylittlecurry]

Hi Ah-San,
This is Diana. I just saw your post on WXC. I can't post on it so I'm just going to write this to you.
The first year the baby has 6 routine checkups - 1wk, 1m, 3m, 6m, 9m, 12m. Each checkup costs about $200-$250, but you can probably bargain it down to ~$170. So for a healthy baby, you're looking at about $1200 for the checkups.
Generally you'll want to buy an insurance with a high deductible and low premium, but make sure there's a coinsurance part that caps the maximum out of pocket expenses for the year. I have a Lumenos plan with Intel and this is how it works:
- I pay the first $2400 of expenses for the year (that's the deductible)
- After that, the plan pays 90% of expenses until I paid $4500 total
- $4500 is the maximum out of pocket for the year. After that, the plan pays for 100% of expenses.
- For this plan, I pay no premium.
So, for my healthy baby, I only paid $1200 for the year total. Compare to a plan that charges $300 a month but no deductible - that's $3600 just for the premium and I'll only use $1200.
Take your examples, if you pay $970/m and $500 deductible, that means you'll pay $960*12 + $500 = $12K a year. For the other plan for $350/m and $5000 deductible, you'll pay $350 * 12 + $1200 = $5400. That's clearly a better plan. But make sure the plans have a maximum out of pocket that you can live with.
Diana