SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed four bills to protect pregnant women and new mothers. The bills ensure maternity services are covered by health insurers and new mothers can no longer lose their health insurance as a result of taking maternity leave.
“Healthy mothers mean healthy babies. I want the next generation of Californians to get the best possible start in life. The bills I signed today require that insurance companies cover maternity services for pregnant women,” said Governor Brown, “and ensures that mothers who take maternity leave no longer have to fear losing their medical coverage.”
The following bills have been signed by Governor Brown:
SB 222 by Senator Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) and AB 210 by Assemblymember Roger Hernandez ( D-Baldwin Park ) – Together, these bills require that every individual and group health insurance policy must provide coverage for maternity services.SB 299 by Senator Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) – This bill prohibits employers from refusing to maintain and pay for coverage under group health plans for women who take maternity leave. Governor Brown also signed SB 502 by Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), the Hospital Infant Feeding Act. This bill will help hospitals promote breast feeding.
"We applaud Governor Brown for making the rights of pregnant mothers a priority, by signing SB 222,” said Senator Evans, the Chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus. “SB 222 ensures that women and/or mothers-to-be no longer need to go without maternity care or maternity health insurance coverage.”
While current law does require HMOs and health insurers to include maternity coverage in their group health insurance plans, individually-marketed plans are not subject to that requirement. As a result, inexpensive, “maternity-free” insurance policies have proliferated on the insurance market, and the number of policies that include maternity coverage has dropped from 82 percent in 2004 to only 12 percent in 2010, leaving many California women priced out of the insurance market. While maternity coverage is expected to be included in the new federal health care reform law in 2014, the federal law may not cover all policies.
We need to keep in mind that healthy mother's created healthy children
ReplyDeleteAll unborn children should have the right to be born healthy. So let protect all pregnant women and new mother
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