I've been out of the states for 3 years and now I'm headed back. My fiance just got approved!! Yay! But I'm remembering one of the big differences between Italy and the U.S. The Health Crap(woops I mean Care) System! I know that once we are in the states it'll be a while before we figure out where we want to live and find stable jobs and such with health insurance. Plus, I don't know if it's still like this, but I remembered that many jobs make you wait a year before they give you health insurance? I have seen that there are short term coverages for immigrants and then separate coverages for citizens (as myself). Can anyone recommend one? I've been trying to research it online but it actually seems that finding health insurance will be more complicated than this whole visa process has been! The other thing I noticed is that many of them that would cover me won't cover pregnancy/birth, and we are hoping to be starting a family soon. Thanks all.

Hi Chess,

You're right...it is the US Health Crap System! Most companies, if they hire you permanently, would allow you to purchase their health insurance coverage for you and your husband regardless if he's a citizen or not...just as long as he's your legal spouse. In fact, some companies allow for non-married couples to be on the same insurance plan (which is called domestic partnership) My job offers that benefit. As far as starting a family, I don't see why they won't cover it...I am under the impression that as long as you have health insurance it's cover. Good luck to you and your move back to the US! And again, congratulations to you on the recent approval.

I would go with short term health insurance. It isn't great, but most are for 2-5 million of lifetime coverage. ehealthinsurance has a lot of options.

Very, very few individual plans cover pregnancy/well baby care. Some will cover complications of pregnancy only. I highly suggest looking into what your state or local government has to offer for this if you plan or accidently get pregnant before you get a job with benefits you are eligible for. Otherwise, I guess you will have to wait. To be honest, this was one of the best perks to living and having my child in Germany. I didn't have to worry about this and never saw a single bill. One of the reasons we decided against more children was that we knew we would be moving back to this garbage in the US and we didn't want to afford it. LOL, no way to stay in Italy longer?

Also, you have to basically have no pre-existing conditions to apply for an individual plan. They have draconian underwriting policies, just keep that in mind if you apply.

If they even offer it at all. Health insurance programmes have been changed drastically in the recent years. What once was, may no longer be

Hi! We tried to search for insurance for long time, no luck, coz i havent been here at least 6 or 12 months....my husband could add me to his plan but it would cover only emergency + we would have to pay tooooooo much. We found 7 corners, the coverage isnt great but its worth it, better than nothing, and they might also cover pregnancy or maternity or what is it http://www.sevencorners.com/insuranceplans/immigrantmedical/
We filed online and been approved right after. Good ins for the start I think.

It looks good and all except that it only does the insurance for my fiance who is the immigrant, right? I'm American but have been living out of the U.S. and am going to return. All of the short term, like 1 year, policies I've seen for citizens don't cover pregnancy/maternity. I'm not sure how long it'll be before I'd be getting some kind of insurance from a job that I don't have yet. And I really don't want to wait a year before getting pregnant. Also we still haven't made up our mind what state we will live in because my fiance has never been to the U.S. before. We will get married really soon after we get to the U.S. so maybe there are short term policies that would be cheaper to cover us both as short term policy after we are married? It seems prices are a lot higher for women than men.

If I were you, I would cancel the K-1, marry in Italy, have a kid there, file DCF, and come back after the birth. Then your husband has a CR-1, can work the minute he passes the POE.

I am cheap and lazy like that. You may have some other pressing reason for wanting to return right now.

Actually staying was a consideration. Our problem is that neither one of us is a legal resident of Italy. He's Albanian. It's been hard on us job wise. Plus, because we aren't legal we can't marry here. We are in the process of possibly getting docs for Italy but now that we have gone through all this hard work and paid sooo much money to do the American visa, it's hard to not use it.

Ah, k, I understand. Being a legal resident is a requirement.

To be honest, the best I can tell you is to just keep looking at ehealthinsurance.com and put in different states for individual long term plans. Occasionally, you will happen on a state where individual companies offer a bit of maternity coverage. In my state though, the best you can expect is complications of pregnancy or maternity coverage for only an extra $300 a month and that only covers up to $3000 of expenses.