Financial considerations: health insurance

Ever since the birth of our baby Serenity (Youyang),she has seen doctors, pediatricians to be precise.This is common in the US, as each baby (supposely) has a pediatrician look after her/him. Of course, this is assume the baby has health insurance coverage. In the US it usually means she/he will be covered under one of the parent ‘s plan, or in the case of no plan for parents, there are some government plans for low income family kids.

I was a bit nervous on the health insurance thing, both for my wife’s labor and the baby, because I changed my employer recently, which also means I am enrolling in a new plan (unknow factors). The new plan is slightly expensive than my old plan, understandably because my new employer is a smaller organization (compared to the old one), resulting in less negotiation power. Health insurance (excuse me healthcare) reform has being a hot topic in the US because of year long debate, and the dramatic ending (house passed the bill on Sunday). Hopefully when my baby has her kid, she need not worry too much about that?

Back to the topic, in order to add her into my plan, basically we need her social security number. We filled a form in hospital for application of social security card. That card arrived two days ago, much to my pleasant surprise (18 days after her birth). Government sometimes does have high efficiency. That’s not the end of story, a problem arise when we add her to the medical insurance, do we add her to dental plan as well (dental insurance is separate in the US)? Because if we don’t add her at this time, there will be some penalties (basicially waiting period for certain major services). So basically I end up buying dental insurance for her (add $17 more per month) for our so-far-toothless baby girl. This is much cheaper than the medical insurance though.