BALTIMORE, Md. — According to their website, Capital Women’s Care’s contract with UnitedHealthcare terminated on Friday, Aug. 1. The medical practice group claims to be the largest OB/GYN network in the DMV, with 75 offices across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. That includes locations in Bowie, Clinton and Waldorf.
The website reads: “Capital Women’s Care’s contract with UnitedHealthcare terminated Aug. 1, 2025. Despite repeated efforts to negotiate an equitable solution, we have been unsuccessful. Capital Women’s Care remains open to working with UnitedHealthcare and is hopeful that we will find resolution at a later date.”
The statement advised UnitedHealthcare members to call the number on the back of their membership card to voice their concerns.
“We have a personal interest in your health and well-being. If you are pregnant or undergoing a course of treatment, there are continuity of care options to allow you to continue seeing your provider,” the website statement continued.
Maryland’s No Surprises Act of 2022 mandates that if you are a continuing care patient of an in-network provider or facility and the provider or facility’s contract is terminated with your health plan, your health plan will have to notify you and permit you to continue your care with that provider or facility as if they were still in-network with your plan for 90 days, or until you are no longer a continuing care patient, whichever comes first.
The act provides specific eligibility for who qualifies as a continuing care patient. The stipulations include pregnant patients and those undergoing a course of treatment for the pregnancy from the provider or facility. So, Southern Maryland patients with Capital Women’s Care, including those who are pregnant, have to find a new in-network care option within that time period or risk paying out-of-network costs for their care. Paying out-of-network increases your personal responsibility to the bill, sometimes up to 100%, depending on your healthcare plan.
According to hospital network Kaiser Permanente, the average cost of an unmedicated vaginal birth alone is about $19,000. Patients with healthcare coverage typically pay around $3,000 out of pocket for those births. STAT News also reported in 2023 that the average wait time for a new OB/GYN appointment is 31.4 days. The announcement leaves patients scrambling to find new care against time crunches of the 90-day mandate and their personal medical needs.
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it means they should choose adoption if they hadn’t planned on raising the baby on their own
my gosh, poor kids. They have to survive their parents using birth control, then they have to survive their mom deciding not to have an abortion. Look at what Margaret Sanger has done to this country, just look at what Margaret Sanger has done to this country. Its not a favor.
Maryland would be apro choice state if it allowed sidewalk counselors at every abortion office. Is Maryland working toward that direction? [In order to have an abortion office in this state, you must allow sidewalk counselors access to the patients to offer them alternatives to abortion, thats what pro choice means].
when is a state, including Maryland, going to have the courage to cap the # of abortions it allows per year? To say, we allow abortion, until ?, but only 5,000. After that, no more abortions for the rest of the year. A state has an interest in its population. (It could be less)