You can have two major medical insurance policies if you want to double insure your newborn. It's perfectly okay to carry as many health insurance plans as you can afford. In your case, you can use one as primary and the other as secondary insurance. You'll still need to pay the deductibles and premiums for both health plans. However, it may not be ideal to have your child on two major medical insurance plans because of the cost. If you and your wife have plans with high deductible, then paying etra premium to add dependents might be too costly. You should also keep in mind that the secondary insurance will not pick up the co-pay as it only comes in if the charges for a certain medical service eceed the primary plan's allowable charge. This is assuming that the leftover amount doesn't also eceed the allowable charge of the secondary insurer. Since it's very costly to have two major medical insurance policies on an individual, you should first think about whether you really need to have more than one plan for your child or not. Do you have a high-risk pregnancy? If you don't, then you might be over-insuring (and paying more) for the small probability that some major health issues come up. Weigh your anticipated out-of-pocket epenses for the child against what the increase in premiums will be. Most HMOs usually cover 100% of the medical services after you've already paid your deductible, so it might be best to check the coverage of your and your wife's health plans. - June 18, 2009 @ 8:57 am