I paid $2500 for my last birth. My midwife gives a discount when paid in cash ebfore a certain point in the pregnancy. I also submitted the $2500 to my Flexible Spending Account, so I got a little bit of a tax benefit there. I would jsut recommend talking to yoru midwife to see what she works out. The whole thing you have going there abotu having to fly her down, not meeting her until she comes down for the birth, provide her boarding, and not even knowign the timing soudns terrible to me! That defeats many of the things i love about having a midwife. The $2500 I paid also covered all my prenatal care and birth, so sounds expensive if she's just coming in for the birth part. You can't find any midwife's in your area? Where do you live?
You say your insurance plan does not cover homebirth... does it specifically state that in their plan? I'm on Cigna's HMO plan, they did not cover my last one, but this time around, same exact plan, I called my husband's Benefits department and talked to them about it. Told them I was having a difficult time with Cigna, and they started calling Cigna. To my surprise, 4 weeks later I got a letter saying they were covering my midwife at the "in-Network" rate of 100%. Cigna doesn't have any contracted CPM's in their network anywhere near me, so that was my reasoning. I told them I would be happy to use an in-network provider, but they don't offer one, and refusing to cover any CPM is an illegal discrimination of trade. Anyhow, jsut watned to say that if you're in a group plan, the benefits department is who chooses theinsurance company and the plan, and they may be great allies to make sure that the insurance company is providing the best service to their employees.
Once this baby is born, and my midwife has gotten the check (not about to rock the boat now!), I'm going to work with the benefits dept to see if there's anyway I can get reimbursed for my last birth that they refused to cover.