According to TITLE 42 > CHAPTER 7 > SUBCHAPTER XVIII > Part E > § 1395dd of the EMTALA statute (link: http://www.emtala.com/law/index.html), labor is definitely considered one of those emergencies, and delivery would certainly be a much more imminent emergency.
What my friend discovered was that spousal or policyholder maternity and *dependent *maternity were two completely different things on her particular policy, i.e, the former was covered and the latter was not. It may really be one of those things that literally varies from policy to policy. I’d be interested to see if any insurance professionals weigh in on this thread.
Hospitals certainly must provide medical treatment for women in labor, no doubt. What I was commenting on was not on a hospital’s duty, but on an insurance carrier’s responsibility for coverage of the bill. PLease excuse the lack of a cite for right now, I’ll come back with one as soon as I find one.
On short notice, this is the quickest cite I can come up with. I admit that I’ve lumped together a North Carolina “reasonable and prudent” stature in with EMTALA. As I said above, my knowledge on this subject is limited to NC laws, individual states may vary.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/KnowYourRights/KnowYourEmergencyRoomRights.aspx
I work in a prison and we once ran into a strange situation involving this issue. Our rules are that minors cannot visit inmates unless they have the permission of their parent or legal guardian. We once had a seventeen year old show up with her baby, whose father was a prisoner. So because she was seventeen, we could not allow her in to visit. But because she was the baby’s mother, she was able to give another visitor permission to take the baby into the prison.
Diomedes, welcome to the dope. Nice additions to an interesting thread! Please stick around.
Would she be able to visit if she was emancipated? In your state, was she automatically emancipated due to birth?
I suppose she could argue that in such a case, she was her own legal guardian. But I’ve never heard of an actual case involving this issue.
Sure, but insurance companies are not governed by EMTALA like you said.
Whoa. Is that kinda like being your own grand-pa?