Insurance companies around the country have been dropping health insurance policies that would cover only children.
But in Maryland, two of the state's largest insurance companies are assuring people they will continue to offer child-only policies until healthcare reform takes affect in 2014.
Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield said this afternoon they will offer the policies, often used by parents who may not have coverage through work.
Healthcare reform made it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions after September of this year, but does not require all companies to offer policies.
Some insurance companies throughout the country have refused to sell child-only insurance policies because they think parents will only look for coverage when their children are sick.
The child-only policies only account for 2 percent of the individual insurance market but can be crucial to families who do not have access to family coverage. Parents whose employers don't offer insurance may want to buy an individual policy for their children so at least somebody in the household is covered.
The Maryland Insurance Administration said it is putting emergency regulations in place so that the child-only policies will be offered in two open enrollment periods in January and July until 2014.
CareFirst said in a statement that limiting applications to certain periods would discourage parents from waiting to enroll their children until they needed medical care, which runs up costs.