[inside right facing flap]

If not, get ready now...

because your largest health care cost component is potentially the most explosive!

[inside text]

Maternity Costs: Everyone's Challenge

They're called million-dollar babies, but they're not the offspring of millionaires. Born before their time, severely underweight or with serious birth defects, these fragile infants need intensive hospital care for days, weeks or even months at a cost of more than $1,500 a day.

Despite heroic—and costly—efforts to save these babies, not all survive. And if they do, it's to face a life of chronic illness and disability requiring thousands more in medical care. One medical source puts the average lifetime cost of caring for those born prematurely at $450,000. And that's after complicated delivery costs that range from $14,000 to $30,000.

It would be one thing if these catastrophic cases were rare or simply a matter of misfortune. But in the United States, which has one of the highest infant mortality and morbidity rates in the world, they're all too frequent.

Infant mortality, or the rate of live births that end in the first year of life, is strongly associated with low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams), which in turn is often the result of preterm birth. We don't yet know all the causes of preterm birth, but we do know many can be better managed. We also know that no socio-economic group is immune to complicated pregnancies.

Indeed, studies are showing that just because a woman has health insurance is not a guarantee she'll get adequate prenatal care, which may prevent many complications. And even if a woman is seeing an obstetrician, there may be behavioral or genetic risk factors that remain undetected until it's too late.

Any organization with a significant number of women of child-bearing age that either funds or manages health care reimbursements is paying the high cost of complicated pregnancies. A study conducted by the Center for Risk Management and Insurance Research estimates that complicated births cost employers $5.6 billion a year more than normal pregnancies. With 80% of the nation's working women in their childbearing years, employers are recognizing the potential and growing liability that maternity costs represent.