Before pregnancy, confirm your maternity insurance enrollment; an unemployed spouse can also claim maternity medical expenses
Grade AMedium benefitMoneyFreeLittle timeNo willpower
When the employer pays maternity insurance, medical costs of childbirth and the allowance during maternity leave both come from that fund. If the spouse has no job, the medical-cost part can still be claimed. Whether you have enough months of enrollment, and whether birth outside the local area needs advance filing, must be asked early.
- Cost
- No money spent. One call to the social insurance or yibao (医保 — basic medical insurance) advice line
- Benefit
- Article 54 of the Social Insurance Law: when the employer has paid maternity insurance premiums, the employee enjoys maternity insurance benefits. An unemployed spouse of the employee enjoys maternity medical expense benefits under national rules, paid from the maternity insurance fund. When the unit pays maternity insurance, the employee gets benefits, and medical costs when that unemployed spouse gives birth also come from the same fund. Maternity insurance benefits have two parts: maternity medical expenses — the medical costs of childbirth itself — and the maternity allowance — the money paid to you during maternity leave. Article 56 lists three situations for the allowance: female employees on maternity leave after birth, leave for family-planning procedures, and other situations set by laws and regulations. The maternity allowance is “paid according to the employer’s average monthly wage of employees in the previous year” — the unit’s prior-year average, not your own wage
- Notes
- Ask the local medical insurance authority two things early. First, whether continuous enrollment months are enough, and whether there is a minimum. Second, if birth is not in the enrollment area, whether you must file an out-of-area maternity record first, and how costs are claimed without filing. Rules differ by place; this text does not check each locality — asking early is the author’s experience. Leave days and how the allowance is calculated are in Section 18, Item 2
Sources · 1
- 全国人大常委会 (2010). 中华人民共和国社会保险法（第五十四、五十六条）. guangdong.chinatax.gov.cn/gdsw/qysw_gkwj/2020…（国家税务总局广东省税务局转载）