Don’t Need Maternity Benefits

I am a 63-year-old woman. My husband and I are both retired and each carry an individual health insurance policy. We were informed recently that 1) each of our deductibles were being raised from $3,500 per year to $4,200 per year (which we have never met). In addition, we were informed our monthly payments were increasing an average of 20 percent per month. We figured, “What else is new?”

We received a letter from our insurance company the other day indicating “beginning July 1, 2012, we will be adding maternity benefits to your policy. … we’ll cover certain behavioral health treatment for pervasive development disorder or autism. …We’re doing this because California law now requires all individual policies must provide these benefits.”

Did one fail to notice I am a 63-year-old female, my husband is a male? Neither one of us is going to need maternity benefits. We have no dependents (thus the individual policy) who will develop “developmental disorder or autism.” If one had a child that would develop these, one would have a policy that covered dependents, thus it would not be an individual policy.

I am attempting to find out what percent of our increases are due to this new law. Perhaps lawmakers need to think about what they are enacting. I feel it is blanket laws like this that increase the cost of health insurance beyond the scope of many people.