If you have insurance through work or have no plans on having children, this post is not for you. However, if you have to pay your own insurance due to self-employment or a job that simply doesn't offer it, this might be useful. Either way, here's my story.

When our first child was born, I was self-employed and my wife worked, so her insurance coverage paid for all the maternity bills. But then she decided to stay home, meaning we had to buy our own insurance. A big question for us was: should we buy maternity coverage?

If you don't know, maternity coverage is very expensive. Why? Because pretty much everyone who buys it ends up using it, or they wouldn't be buying it in the first place, so the insurance company makes you pay a lot to have it.

My wife & I had reason to believe it might take a while for her to become pregnant, or that it might not happen at all. If so, that maternity coverage could end up costing us a lot more than simply paying the bills out of pocket. Pretty much the only way buying insurance made sense is if she got pregnant really fast after we bought it. So we decided to risk it, and deal with paying the bills ourselves if/when she became pregnant.

So what happened? She got pregnant immediately. Not only did she get pregnant, the end of her pregnancy was filled with bed rest and a few nights at the hospital. Our child came out just fine, thank you, but the bills were B-I-G.

But here's a secret about hospitals. If you don't have coverage, but can pay your bill quickly, they'll often give you a big discount, because they're afraid you won't pay the bill at all. We had saved money along the way to pay the hospital bills, but not enough to cover the bills when the extra nights in the hospital got thrown into the mix. So we told the hospital our position, and they said, "OK, pay X percentage of what you owe and we'll forgive the rest." My guess is that they made us pay the same amount that the insurance companies would normally reimburse them for, but I can't prove that.

Anyway, long story short, we probably paid more than we would have without maternity coverage, but not a ton more.

Side note: Doctors do not seem to like people without insurance, because we have this pesky habit of asking how much things cost, and our health care system is set up so that no one can even tell you what anything costs. I asked the doctor once if he could make sure not to overdo it with the tests and procedures since it was coming out of my pocket (I put it more delicately than this), and he acted like I was accusing him of being a quack who does random procedures to run up the bill. I can see why he felt that way, but I was more interested in our finances than his feelings. It was awkward.

Not sure if that story is helpful to anyone in any way, but it took care of today's post, so it's helpful to me!