Dollar-Free Donations
Many people understand the plight that uninsured pregnant women face, before and after delivery. Some of those people want to help; and some pregnant women are lucky enough to receive charitable donations that help them survive during economically tumultuous times.
Non-profit organizations like Maternity Health award scholarships for maternity care expenses, funded by monetary donations. Unfortunately, not everyone can donate money – especially during a recession.
But just because you don’t have the extra cash doesn’t mean you can’t donate meaningfully, or that your gifts won’t be graciously accepted. Dollar-free donations for uninsured pregnant women come in many forms and from many different sponsors: businesses, individuals, families, foundations and others can always find items to donate to pregnant women. And women who recently received charity during their own pregnancies are encouraged to pay it forward by passing along unused baby supplies to newly-pregnant women.
Take a quick look through your pantry, attic or nursery to see if you can donate:
- Maternity clothes
- Blankets
- Pillows
- Beds/Cribs/Bassinets
- Diapers
- Baby shampoo/soap
- Changing table
- Baby swing
- High chairs
- Car seats
- Books on raising babies/children
- Gift certificates
- Food
- Toys
Your donated items can save pregnant women a lot of money and help ease their struggles. Several maternity charity organizations exist that can pass your donations along to uninsured pregnant women, or you can give personalized donations to families in your area. You can often find a local outpost – try contacting your Chamber of Commerce for ideas – or you can donate your items to a food pantry to resell in order to pay for food for needy families. Many of these organizations allow your donations to be earmarked for pregnant women and women with young children, so you can make sure your donations are going to the people you intend.
Dollar-free donations are easy, can help you clear clutter and make you feel good about helping those less fortunate. Most importantly, your donations can reduce financial stresses and bring satisfaction, security and joy to pregnant women and their children. Donate dollar-free today!
Another Glimmer of Hope For Pregnant Women
Remember the huge March of Dimes Report Card that shed light on the pervasive premature birth problem in the United States? You know, the one that put in indisputable figures the dismal state of our maternity health care system… the one that found that one of the leading factors in the U.S. premature birth rate is a lack of prenatal care?
While legislators finally begin addressing the overwhelming need for proper and affordable prenatal care, some institutions have been offering affordable prenatal care to pregnant women for years. And the results are just as stunning as the figures in the March of Dimes report.
Take Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital, which last week announced that it had cut premature rates almost by half in the last two decades (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-babies_28met.ART0.State.Edition1.4a5c74e.html).
The information published by Parkland validates the assertion that prenatal care is vital to healthy, timely delivery. Two paragraphs say it all:
“Dallas County’s public hospital, which operates one of the nation’s busiest maternity wards, cut its rate of premature births nearly in half – to 4.9 percent in 2006 from 9.4 percent of births in 1988.
Parkland officials credited comprehensive prenatal care for improving the outcomes of 16,000 births annually at the hospital, which has the second-highest number of deliveries in any U.S. hospital.”
The statistics are amazing, especially for a high-volume hospital such as Parkland. And to what does Parkland owe its stellar premature birth rate record? PRENATAL CARE!
What’s more, Parkland officials say most of their maternity patients are low-income women who either pay affordable $50 co-payments per visit or qualify for government assistance and pay little to nothing at all.
With these figures, it’s no surprise that Parkland is ranked among the nation’s best gynecological hospitals (http://www.usnews.com/listings/hospitals/6740950). And because Parkland is a PUBLIC HOSPITAL, the hospital’s success in reducing instances of premature births lends credence to the notion that publicly-funded medicine can and does work!
Let’s hope that the news doesn’t fall on deaf ears, that Congress learns from the successes of others and works to provide proper prenatal care to all women, regardless of socioeconomic factors, so America’s future is invested in healthy children.
COBRA Alternatives for Uninsured Pregnant Women
If your pregnant and recently lost your job due to layoffs, you’ve probably been offered COBRA – an opportunity to continue to receive health insurance benefits provided that you pay for them. And, you’ve probably discovered that COBRA is expensive – extravagantly so.
If you’re eligible for COBRA, the stimulus plan has provisions to subsidize 65% of your premium until December 31, 2009. That means that if your monthly COBRA premium is $1,000, you will actually pay $350 – still a large chunk of change, especially when you’ve recently lost your income.
eHealthInsurance.com has instituted a new COBRA comparison tool (https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ehi/health-insurance/cobra-learning-center.html?allid=Com22130) that allows you input your COBRA premium, find out what your subsidized payment would be if you take COBRA coverage, and then offers alternative individual and family health care plans.
WARNING: Watch what you sign up for. While the eHealthInsurance.com tool seems to offer excellent COBRA alternatives (starting at around $50 per month for a 29 year old woman, depending on location and health history), certain factors can turn appealing offers into nightmares laden with shortcomings.
For example, a plan with a $50 premium might sound good, but when you take a closer look you might find that you have a $10,000 deductible, a 20% co-pay, and that the plan DOES NOT COVER PRENATAL CARE OR HOSPITAL DELIVERY. At the end of the day, such a plan would not offer much of a benefit to pregnant women at all; despite the $300/month premium savings over COBRA.
The bottom line is that comprehensive health insurance policies are not cheap – so don’t be fooled by affordable policies that will come up short when you need them the most.
