A pair of twins was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One twin was born before 2011 had officially ended, and the other twin was born after 2012 had begun. How does having different birth years affect the health insurance of the twin’s parents?
Beckett and Freya Humenny, who are fraternal twins, were born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beckett was born at 6:40 p.m. on December 31, 2011. I think that everyone is aware that women can only give birth to one baby at a time. Twins usually share the same birthdate, (but different birth times). Freya was born a few hours after her twin brother. She was born at 12:26 a.m. on January 1, 2012.
These fraternal twins have different birthdays. This isn’t completely unheard of, but it is unusual.
In my family, there is a pair of fraternal twins who were born on different days, in different months. One was born on the last day of June, and the other twin was born on the first day of July. Personally, I think this is very cool, because it means that the twins don’t have to share their birthday with each other. They each get their own, special, celebration.
Beckett and Freya won’t have to share a birthday, either, which is nice. The problematic thing, though, is that these twins do not share a birth year. Beckett was born at the very end of 2011, but Freya wasn’t born until the calendar had flipped over to 2012. How does that change of year affect their parent’s health insurance?
To fully answer that question, one would have to know a whole lot of details about the health insurance policy that the parents purchased. Without those facts, the best I can do is come up with potential, hypothetical, scenarios.
It is possible that the parent’s had a high deductible health insurance plan. These plans require people to pay down the entire amount of their deductible before the health insurance will actually cover anything.
Let’s assume that the parents had already met their deductible for 2011. That could mean that the medical bills that connect to Beckett’s birth might be covered. It might not cover the bills connected to Freya’s birth, because she was born in a new year, and the deductible would start all over again.
How would an insurer separate out which bills go with Beckett’s birth from the bills connected to Freya’s birth? I have no idea. I think it could depend on if the insurer decides that the mother’s admission to the hospital counted as one “event”, (even though the births occurred as the year was changing over).
Hopefully, the parents had the type of health insurance that covered maternity expenses. If not, then they are likely to be paying out of pocket for all the medical bills that were generated when the twins were born, (no matter what year that technically happened in).
Image by Janet McKnight on Flickr