First kid was no cost to us. My wife was on insurance with her employer. Long day, but no complications. I kept waiting for a bill that never came. Couldn't believe we didn't pay anything!
By the time the second kid came around, we were self-insured on the healthcare.gov marketplace. We ended up paying $5000 out of pocket - $2k for the prenatal care and doctors' services, $3k for the delivery and stay at the hospital.
We made a $1500 mistake. My wife had a really fast and normal delivery, but it was so fast that they didn't have time to administer an antibiotic that they otherwise would have. They wanted to monitor her for a day to look for an infection. We said okay, but if I had more closely read my policy I'd have learned that the policy had a $1500/day copay for labor and delivery. We'd have taken our chances and gone home had we known.
Kid three is coming! And this year's marketplace plan says that we're on our own up to the individual deductible of $6950. That's a bronze plan that carries a $950/month premium for 4 people; financial assistance from the government drops that down to $700/month. So we pay $8400/year for the privilege of not paying more than $7000 for an individual ($14,000 for the family) on our plan.
I don't think state-run healthcare is the only solution here (nor is it an inherently bad solution; I'm no libertarian), but I have to think that I'm living in the worst of all worlds here. I'm forced to buy an expensive product that I'm afraid to use, a product that costs more than the roof over my head per month but delivers a fraction of the value. It's expensive because it's violating basic principles of insurance, because the people who made the law are trying to implement universal healthcare in a system that's not built for that idea (at least not in the way it currently exists).
If I lived in a more market-based system there'd be price transparency, presumably a better way to monitor outcomes, and a lot more say in what kind of policy I could get to better accommodate the needs of my family.
Anyways, there are alternatives and means for assistance out there, and we're exploring them. But we like our doctors and our hospital; it's a shame that we have to look elsewhere. Not looking for sympathy, just adding a data point! My takeaway from that article was that maybe we should price out a trip to Spain sometime late in the third trimester :)
> We said okay, but if I had more closely read my policy I'd have learned that the policy had a $1500/day copay for labor and delivery. We'd have taken our chances and gone home had we known.
What the bloody flying everliving fuck??
Does this not seem absolutely absurd to anybody else? You'd have risked a severe infection for the mother of your newborn child had you known there was a monetary cost attached to not risking it? This is patently ridiculous, and it is inhumane that people have to make such calculations.
You go to the place with the people in white robes when you're sick. No ifs, no buts, no strings attached. This is how you keep a healthy, productive populace.
No wonder the US, the largest economy in the world, ended up with a terrible infant mortality rate…
> "Persistently high poverty rates, poor educational outcomes, and a relatively weak social safety net have made the US the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into."
… yeah. As a young person who's planning on having a family: I will go work in the US exactly never.
My wife is a resident physician. She also went through the same experience of delivering a kid.
Here's what I've learned:
* Pricing is not transparent. When the hospital tells you how much the procedure will cost, they are not telling you about the anesthesiologists portion, or the room fee, ect. There will be surprise bills. Why isn't it law that Hospitals provide transparent pricing for non-emergency procedures?
* Doctors are in short supply. This is because becoming a doctor is impossibly hard. Why can't undergraduates enter straight into a medical school program? Doctor's are in the 30's when they complete training and are already halfway toward the retirement age
* If things go badly during the delivery, you will be glad you are at a well equipped Hospital. A $5000 bill is a small price to pay to ensure the baby does not arrive brain damaged.
I can't imagine dealing with such bills for bringing a child into the world. I was a military wife when I had kids. It cost me a few dollars a day for a hospital stay. I think both births were around $20 out of pocket, give or take a few bucks. I was in the hospital three days the first time and two days the second and the price went up a bit in between the two births.
but I have to think that I'm living in the worst of all worlds here.
I worked in insurance for a time. I do think Obamacare is the worst of all worlds. Requiring universal insurance is a terrible way to try to arrange universal health coverage for the nation.
Have you and your wife considered using a birth center for #3 if there are no complications or high risk factors? My wife and I had our son at a midwife center in the US, and our prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care combined ran about $3k (of which our insurance covered about 2/3). The midwives were great, and overall I think it was a less stressful experience than the hospital might have been.
Tough call there. The antibiotics were likely for Group B Streptococcus, meaning during prenatal screening she tested positive. I work in the field and we see some terrible outcomes from GBS (and other bacterial) infections such as blood stream infections, neonatal infections to hysterectomies and death. I've seen cases where moms have symptoms at home but they simply chalk them up to "what happens after giving birth". So whatever choice you make, tell your wife to listen to her body.
My first son was born 10 weeks too early, we lived in Denmark at the time, cost 0.
My second son was born in New York and we had good health care coverage costed us nothing.
Right now we are on Cobra and we are fine. But once thats up we will have to find something else and I worry about the cost of that plan.
One thing I have learned though is that it's normally possible to negotiate the price down quist substantially (more than 50% sometimes) especially because these days it's the hospitals themselves who need to do the collecting and they simply aren't prepared for that (patient cost sharing up 230% and deductibles up more that 60%) They just want some money.
To add, I have almost identical numbers across the board w/ a delivery in 2017. My bronze plan is up to $1100/mo though and I get no assistance.
> If I lived in a more market-based system [...]
Unfortunately you can be vilified for saying this stuff in public. If you believe others, you are helping subsidize the poor and those with preconditions. In a market-based system you end up paying for what you need which, while it seems rational, is often considered amoral.
Insurance through employer is not a “no cost to us”. Employer is taking a significant chunk out of your income and giving it to insurance company. Government has already made insurance “self-funded” through HSA as well. So first few thousands dollars are coming directly out of your pocket.
In India, there are small boutique hospitals that solve this very problem (e.g. https://www.cloudninecare.com/;https://www.motherhoodindia.com/;http://ovumhospitals.com/ and hundreds more in every city). I have always been so surprised by how "broken" maternity is in the U.S. and just how overtly "scammy" some of the things are e.g. if one needed breast-pumps, there is a 'company representative' that would deliver it to your hospital room and you get charged separately - by the company - and nurses get a kick-back; There is a nexus of private practitioners roaming the hospital wards helping mom's with early care - most of them looking for 'repeat business', after one is discharged. This is from experience in San Francisco. Not to mention the 'baby-product-industrial-complex' where one is convinced that highly special, safe and pink or blue colored equipment is needed for baby care. So there is a LOT of money made in the U.S. from every birth by a vast nexus of companies. Just the product choices one is forced to make drives millions of panicked google searches a year (with 'listicle-focused-SEO-hog-blogs' feeding off of this) -- just to search for the "right" equipment. Why can't just one company consolidate this -- and offer a one-stop-solution? Naked Capitalism is on its full-show during the birth process in America. It is indeed very strange.
The reason for this comment is that HN has a 'startup' bent to it, so I hope some entrepreneur just Warby-Parkers (is it a verb?) the baby birth process. There is definitely room for massive simplification. Make each decision simple -- that alone is a giant opportunity.
Interestingly, Scotland now has 'baby boxes' too [0] - but not the rest of the UK, it is an initiative by the devolved Scottish government only it seems.
A free-standing birth center, without a financial incentive to divert you into an associated hospital, could run you $700 out of $3000. (you pay $700, insurance pays $2300) Some of these places are very nice, feeling far less like a prison or mental institution than a hospital. I know one where the laboring mother can open the door to her room, then step out on to a patio that is separated from the street only by some large bushes. There is no feeling that the place is ready to lock you in and call social workers over a bit of dark humor.
A midwife at home would be perhaps $1000 out of $5000. (you pay $1000, insurance pays $4000) Residents of California may have trouble finding this; the obstetricians got their competition mostly outlawed.
Doing things by yourself is of course free. I did that with twins and with a 10-pound (4.5 kg) kid.
With all of the above, you are far less likely to be subjected to time pressures that will lead to drugs and ultimately to major surgery. Surgery is not just an expense; it is a hazard to both mother and babies because it impairs the ability to maintain and deliver future pregnancies. Surgery rates in the USA are improperly high because of how an uneducated jury is thought to respond; death and injury from surgery ("at least they tried everything") looks better than death and injury from non-action.
Except for the do-it-yourself option, there is emergency equipment. People greatly overestimate the chance of having a fast-developing problem, and they overestimate the ability of a standard hospital to respond effectively. If you truly need surgery, the time to travel for it can overlap nicely with the time it takes a hospital to prepare.
>With all of the above, you are far less likely to be subjected to time pressures that will lead to drugs and ultimately to major surgery.
See here's the problem with the American system. You feel like the 'better choice' is a private birthing centre rather than a hospital because of the issues you outlined. The better option is single payer health. In Canada, where I live, there's no pressures to get it over with. If you have a 3 day labour, you have a 3 day labour. If you need an extra day stay, you stay an extra day. Not once does someone bring up cost... not the doctors, not the patient, not the family, nobody. We have birthing centres for those who want them. You can deliver at home with a midwife if you want. When I had my two kids, my cost was $14.95 for parking and ~$20 for my lunch/dinner.
> Doing things by yourself is of course free. I did that with twins and with a 10-pound (4.5 kg) kid.
Do not attempt this at home...
Sure, 95% of the time you'll be fine and have no complications (for mom or baby), but do you really want to risk it for that 5%?
I suspect this will be one of those trends that seems very appealing until we get a few headlines of home births gone wrong. Especially dangerous if it is your first baby, or if you have other risk factors.
> Residents of California may have trouble finding this; the obstetricians got their competition mostly outlawed.
I live in Berkeley. In our recent birthing class, of 9 couples, 3 had home births. YMMV in more far flung places of California but I've not heard of any problems here having talked in detail about birth stories with these families.
(We were not one of them, we opted for Hospital birth and it cost around $12k)
>I know one where the laboring mother can open the door to her room, then step out on to a patio that is separated from the street only by some large bushes.
Oh man, I'm trying to picture walking by those bushes and hearing the screams behind them.
>There is no feeling that the place is ready to lock you in and call social workers over a bit of dark humor.
Not all hospitals, I guess. Ours has a really nice maternity ward and we got along well with the staff, and we had already met all of the doctors prior to delivery. Had one incident where they didn't want to admit us and sent us home for a few hours, but apart from that it was a positive experience.
If anything, the administrators should go down in that time period that just happens to coincide with the mass adoption of computers by all businesses. What this graph is saying is that while the US population grew about 50% in that time (203-308 million), administrator incompetence grew 2300% over that time despite the mass adoption of computers. In other words, one administrator from the 70's could easily replace dozens if not hundreds of administrators today and get the same amount of work done. This kind of incompetence is beyond comprehension both at the administrator level and the executive level that hires them.
When my son was born, I paid $5K to a birthing center in Boise, a couple of blocks from the hospital.
We visited frequently over the 9 months, and each time stayed for about 4-5 days in a birthing room with a hot tub. Also true after my son was born. And then for a few return visits for checkups. And then for a return visit just to visit Boise and hang-out and chill with other parents, expecting parents, etc.
$5K, all inclusive. Just like Club Med (been to the one in Cancun... lovely vacation spot).
I had insurance... if anything would've happened, an ambulance would've picked us up and taken us to the hospital and then insurance coverage would've kicked in.
It's well beyond theoretical. The system is total nonsense.
I think a sane first step would be a N-month statute of limitations on bills. Anything you're going to be billed for should be sent within N-months. I'm not saying that it should take that long. I'm saying right now there's no limit whatsoever. You could receive a bill for some itemized sub portion (lab work, specialist, a different doctor, etc) a year after a hospital visit and you have no clue what it's for.
I'm not arguing it's cheaper to give birth in America, but it doesn't seem like this article makes fair comparisons. What an insurance company or hospital charges includes some amount of mark-up, so is more than just the "cost." Likewise, in countries with socialized medicine, the hospital might charge the patient nothing, but it _cost_ someone something (people's time, depreciation on equipment, electricity, and lots of other things). Adjusting for these probably doesn't make everything come out the same, but it would make the claims less sensational.
Healthcare here is a joke. No clear pricing, no clarity on what is or isn't actually covered, mega bills that get delivered a year late then you then have to argue over.
The only way to not go bankrupt is to not get sick, ever.
I agree that our healthcare system is messed up but the insurance company paid for 95% of her bill. Seems like she got her money's worth from the insurance company.
When we had our daughter I was annoyed that I ended up paying about £50 for parking for the week that recovery from the cesarian took.
Looking back I guess that was a bit short sighted!
At the company I work for, our previous insurer doubled our premiums, so we switched. It went from so-so to terrible.
My daughter cut her hand and needed stitches; I took her to the ER; their surgeon was booked, so they sent me to a different one. I got a $160k bill for an "elective surgery."
It took a couple of phone calls to get the point across that stitches for a hand bleeding through 3 dressings is not elective. 6 months later, the surgeon still has not gotten paid (I know this because sometimes get copied on the "request for extra information" that is sent out by the company).
Also I get about 3 letters from the insurance company for every visit that involves insurance (PT after the hand injury was weekly, so this was a lot). I asked if I could get those electronically, and apparently my plan doesn't qualify for paperless...
My wife ended up w/ an unplanned C section to deliver our daughter in 2013 in Dayton, Ohio. Both mom and daughter had reasons for two extra days in the hospital. The bill to my wife's insurance company was just under $60,000 for her portion. My daughter's portion was out-of-pocket (because she was on my insurance) and was around $12,000 after the hospital's "cash discount".
A lot of factors contributed to our decision not to have any more children, but the cost of maternity care, birth, and follow-up medical care figured-in prominently. My wife was leaving her job after the birth and everyone was going on my insurance (self-employed, have bought my own insurance since 2004). Had the costs been less I'm not sure we would have opted to have any more, but it would have changed the calculus.
Our insurance had excellent coverage, but I remember being excited when I payed a bill for my wife, and thought that we were good, since we hit the $3,000 max out of pocket per person. And then bills started arriving in my Son's name.. So another $3k..
It cost us $2000+ for the hospital to help my wife deliver our dead baby. The shitty part is that it would have been free under our insurance if the baby were alive. Yay insurance...
I think there are two sides to this. You paid nothing because you were subsidized by others. I can definitely see the other point of view from folks who do not have children and/or do not want children.
Here in the US, I don't particularly want to pay for the masses of folks who refuse to use contraceptives and are up to 4+ children already. There are already way too many people here (and on Earth in general). On the other hand, people should be entitled to free healthcare to a MUCH larger extend than we currently have here. There's a big difference between having a child and you catching the flu, breaking a bone, or getting cancer. The environmental and social impact of having a kid is much larger, and I can see how some folks don't want to subsidize this.
Interesting, lets look at a link from the article:
<i>
Results—In 2010, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 6.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, and the United States ranked 26th in infant mortality among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel opment countries. After excluding births at less than 24 weeks of gestation to ensure international comparability, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 4.2, still higher than for most European countries and about twice the rates for Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. U.S. infant mortality rates for very preterm infants (24–31 weeks of gestation) compared favorably with most European rates. However, the U.S. mortality rate for infants at 32–36 weeks was second-highest, and the rate for infants at 37 weeks of gestation or more was highest, among the countries studied. About 39% of the United States’ higher infant mortality rate when compared with that of Sweden was due to a higher percentage of preterm births, while 47% was due to a higher infant mortality rate at 37 weeks of gestation or more. If the United States could reduce these two factors to Sweden’s levels, the U.S. infant mortality rate would fall by 43%, with nearly 7,300 infant deaths averted annually.
<i>
How much does treating babies with low-birth weight add to the average cost?
For some reason the article didn't mention the cost of malpractice insurance. I wonder why? My cousin, a doctor in Pennsylvania, said at one point, the insurance was getting so expensive, it was driving obstetricians from the state.
Yup- Wanted to burn off some blackheads and a US skin specialist charged $175 to take off 1 using a Ultrasonic machine, went to Mexico and took off 20 for $5 using the same machine.
I've long suspected that a driver of the cost of medical care in America is the middle-people. Everyone who wants to take a cut, and tack on a fee, and increase profits. From the drug maker to the bandaid company. There was a really fascinating article here recently on doctors who only take cash, and I think it really hits to the idea that we're being taken for a ride from a lot of these companies, hospitals, insurers, etc.
I don't recall what the itemized bill was before insurance took care of it, but with health insurance, each of my kids actual cost to me was $100 out of pocket. In the US.
I'm sure the quoted price before insurance was probably ridiculous, though.
No one knows how much healthcare costs in the United States. Not the insurance companies. Not the hospitals. Not the doctors. No one. The prices vary widely across providers, and insurance companies. I was reading a few years ago (alas, I can't find the link, but I think it was in the LA Times. KQED was also working on this recently.[1]) where the author tried shopping around and found where same provider would come up with different itemized breakdowns depending on the insurer. It came down to the provider and the insurer negotiated prices. Say the insurer provider agrees that a procedure costs $1000, but says an x-rays can only cost $500, so the doctor fee is $500. Another insurer says treatments can cost $800, and x-rays can only cost $!00, so suddenly the doctor fee is $700. What's the true price of anything?
Under America's about the only thing you can tell is that total costs are much higher than the rest of the world, and outcomes are actually slightly worse than the rest of the OECD countries.[0]
I understand that you think this is relevant, but I don't think it adds anything to the conversation. Sure, sometimes fees are reasonable, and sometimes (even if you 'go to a hospital covered by insurance, [see] an obstetrician in [your] plan') you get completely fucked. That's the point here, it's really tough to know what you're "signing up for" and what the costs are, even when they SHOULD be fairly transparent.
[+] [-] Brendinooo|8 years ago|reply
By the time the second kid came around, we were self-insured on the healthcare.gov marketplace. We ended up paying $5000 out of pocket - $2k for the prenatal care and doctors' services, $3k for the delivery and stay at the hospital.
We made a $1500 mistake. My wife had a really fast and normal delivery, but it was so fast that they didn't have time to administer an antibiotic that they otherwise would have. They wanted to monitor her for a day to look for an infection. We said okay, but if I had more closely read my policy I'd have learned that the policy had a $1500/day copay for labor and delivery. We'd have taken our chances and gone home had we known.
Kid three is coming! And this year's marketplace plan says that we're on our own up to the individual deductible of $6950. That's a bronze plan that carries a $950/month premium for 4 people; financial assistance from the government drops that down to $700/month. So we pay $8400/year for the privilege of not paying more than $7000 for an individual ($14,000 for the family) on our plan.
I don't think state-run healthcare is the only solution here (nor is it an inherently bad solution; I'm no libertarian), but I have to think that I'm living in the worst of all worlds here. I'm forced to buy an expensive product that I'm afraid to use, a product that costs more than the roof over my head per month but delivers a fraction of the value. It's expensive because it's violating basic principles of insurance, because the people who made the law are trying to implement universal healthcare in a system that's not built for that idea (at least not in the way it currently exists).
If I lived in a more market-based system there'd be price transparency, presumably a better way to monitor outcomes, and a lot more say in what kind of policy I could get to better accommodate the needs of my family.
Anyways, there are alternatives and means for assistance out there, and we're exploring them. But we like our doctors and our hospital; it's a shame that we have to look elsewhere. Not looking for sympathy, just adding a data point! My takeaway from that article was that maybe we should price out a trip to Spain sometime late in the third trimester :)
[+] [-] adimitrov|8 years ago|reply
What the bloody flying everliving fuck??
Does this not seem absolutely absurd to anybody else? You'd have risked a severe infection for the mother of your newborn child had you known there was a monetary cost attached to not risking it? This is patently ridiculous, and it is inhumane that people have to make such calculations.
You go to the place with the people in white robes when you're sick. No ifs, no buts, no strings attached. This is how you keep a healthy, productive populace.
No wonder the US, the largest economy in the world, ended up with a terrible infant mortality rate…
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/us-has-worst-rate-of-child-m...
EDIT: from the article:
> "Persistently high poverty rates, poor educational outcomes, and a relatively weak social safety net have made the US the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into."
… yeah. As a young person who's planning on having a family: I will go work in the US exactly never.
[+] [-] jostmey|8 years ago|reply
Here's what I've learned:
* Pricing is not transparent. When the hospital tells you how much the procedure will cost, they are not telling you about the anesthesiologists portion, or the room fee, ect. There will be surprise bills. Why isn't it law that Hospitals provide transparent pricing for non-emergency procedures?
* Doctors are in short supply. This is because becoming a doctor is impossibly hard. Why can't undergraduates enter straight into a medical school program? Doctor's are in the 30's when they complete training and are already halfway toward the retirement age
* If things go badly during the delivery, you will be glad you are at a well equipped Hospital. A $5000 bill is a small price to pay to ensure the baby does not arrive brain damaged.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|8 years ago|reply
but I have to think that I'm living in the worst of all worlds here.
I worked in insurance for a time. I do think Obamacare is the worst of all worlds. Requiring universal insurance is a terrible way to try to arrange universal health coverage for the nation.
[+] [-] isostatic|8 years ago|reply
(Cost of bringing my children into the world was about £10 - the petrol, the parking, and I bought a chocolate bar and bottle of water at one point)
Why does America stand for it?
[+] [-] rsfern|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giarc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|8 years ago|reply
My second son was born in New York and we had good health care coverage costed us nothing.
Right now we are on Cobra and we are fine. But once thats up we will have to find something else and I worry about the cost of that plan.
One thing I have learned though is that it's normally possible to negotiate the price down quist substantially (more than 50% sometimes) especially because these days it's the hospitals themselves who need to do the collecting and they simply aren't prepared for that (patient cost sharing up 230% and deductibles up more that 60%) They just want some money.
[+] [-] kodablah|8 years ago|reply
> If I lived in a more market-based system [...]
Unfortunately you can be vilified for saying this stuff in public. If you believe others, you are helping subsidize the poor and those with preconditions. In a market-based system you end up paying for what you need which, while it seems rational, is often considered amoral.
[+] [-] sytelus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apercu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_d|8 years ago|reply
Finland has 'baby boxes' delivered by the govt: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22751415
Sweden has a govt sponsored program for end-to-end support for new parents: https://sweden.se/society/10-things-that-make-sweden-family-...
The reason for this comment is that HN has a 'startup' bent to it, so I hope some entrepreneur just Warby-Parkers (is it a verb?) the baby birth process. There is definitely room for massive simplification. Make each decision simple -- that alone is a giant opportunity.
[+] [-] grkvlt|8 years ago|reply
Interestingly, Scotland now has 'baby boxes' too [0] - but not the rest of the UK, it is an initiative by the devolved Scottish government only it seems.
0. https://www.mygov.scot/baby-box/
[+] [-] yorby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burfog|8 years ago|reply
A midwife at home would be perhaps $1000 out of $5000. (you pay $1000, insurance pays $4000) Residents of California may have trouble finding this; the obstetricians got their competition mostly outlawed.
Doing things by yourself is of course free. I did that with twins and with a 10-pound (4.5 kg) kid.
With all of the above, you are far less likely to be subjected to time pressures that will lead to drugs and ultimately to major surgery. Surgery is not just an expense; it is a hazard to both mother and babies because it impairs the ability to maintain and deliver future pregnancies. Surgery rates in the USA are improperly high because of how an uneducated jury is thought to respond; death and injury from surgery ("at least they tried everything") looks better than death and injury from non-action.
Except for the do-it-yourself option, there is emergency equipment. People greatly overestimate the chance of having a fast-developing problem, and they overestimate the ability of a standard hospital to respond effectively. If you truly need surgery, the time to travel for it can overlap nicely with the time it takes a hospital to prepare.
[+] [-] giarc|8 years ago|reply
See here's the problem with the American system. You feel like the 'better choice' is a private birthing centre rather than a hospital because of the issues you outlined. The better option is single payer health. In Canada, where I live, there's no pressures to get it over with. If you have a 3 day labour, you have a 3 day labour. If you need an extra day stay, you stay an extra day. Not once does someone bring up cost... not the doctors, not the patient, not the family, nobody. We have birthing centres for those who want them. You can deliver at home with a midwife if you want. When I had my two kids, my cost was $14.95 for parking and ~$20 for my lunch/dinner.
[+] [-] marcell|8 years ago|reply
Do not attempt this at home...
Sure, 95% of the time you'll be fine and have no complications (for mom or baby), but do you really want to risk it for that 5%?
I suspect this will be one of those trends that seems very appealing until we get a few headlines of home births gone wrong. Especially dangerous if it is your first baby, or if you have other risk factors.
[+] [-] encoderer|8 years ago|reply
I live in Berkeley. In our recent birthing class, of 9 couples, 3 had home births. YMMV in more far flung places of California but I've not heard of any problems here having talked in detail about birth stories with these families.
(We were not one of them, we opted for Hospital birth and it cost around $12k)
[+] [-] Brendinooo|8 years ago|reply
Oh man, I'm trying to picture walking by those bushes and hearing the screams behind them.
>There is no feeling that the place is ready to lock you in and call social workers over a bit of dark humor.
Not all hospitals, I guess. Ours has a really nice maternity ward and we got along well with the staff, and we had already met all of the doctors prior to delivery. Had one incident where they didn't want to admit us and sent us home for a few hours, but apart from that it was a positive experience.
[+] [-] shadowbantruth|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] notadoc|8 years ago|reply
https://i1.wp.com/investingdoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...
[+] [-] mnm1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RGamma|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvagner|8 years ago|reply
We visited frequently over the 9 months, and each time stayed for about 4-5 days in a birthing room with a hot tub. Also true after my son was born. And then for a few return visits for checkups. And then for a return visit just to visit Boise and hang-out and chill with other parents, expecting parents, etc.
$5K, all inclusive. Just like Club Med (been to the one in Cancun... lovely vacation spot).
I had insurance... if anything would've happened, an ambulance would've picked us up and taken us to the hospital and then insurance coverage would've kicked in.
[+] [-] hiyer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koolba|8 years ago|reply
I think a sane first step would be a N-month statute of limitations on bills. Anything you're going to be billed for should be sent within N-months. I'm not saying that it should take that long. I'm saying right now there's no limit whatsoever. You could receive a bill for some itemized sub portion (lab work, specialist, a different doctor, etc) a year after a hospital visit and you have no clue what it's for.
[+] [-] jkingsbery|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bfrog|8 years ago|reply
The only way to not go bankrupt is to not get sick, ever.
[+] [-] remotedreamer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Neil44|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CannisterFlux|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|8 years ago|reply
My daughter cut her hand and needed stitches; I took her to the ER; their surgeon was booked, so they sent me to a different one. I got a $160k bill for an "elective surgery."
It took a couple of phone calls to get the point across that stitches for a hand bleeding through 3 dressings is not elective. 6 months later, the surgeon still has not gotten paid (I know this because sometimes get copied on the "request for extra information" that is sent out by the company).
Also I get about 3 letters from the insurance company for every visit that involves insurance (PT after the hand injury was weekly, so this was a lot). I asked if I could get those electronically, and apparently my plan doesn't qualify for paperless...
[+] [-] EvanAnderson|8 years ago|reply
A lot of factors contributed to our decision not to have any more children, but the cost of maternity care, birth, and follow-up medical care figured-in prominently. My wife was leaving her job after the birth and everyone was going on my insurance (self-employed, have bought my own insurance since 2004). Had the costs been less I'm not sure we would have opted to have any more, but it would have changed the calculus.
[+] [-] briffle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tathougies|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredrikcarno|8 years ago|reply
We had premature twins and it cost us zero. The taxes are sky high but I feel ok that others get ot free also since I got it
[+] [-] craftyguy|8 years ago|reply
Here in the US, I don't particularly want to pay for the masses of folks who refuse to use contraceptives and are up to 4+ children already. There are already way too many people here (and on Earth in general). On the other hand, people should be entitled to free healthcare to a MUCH larger extend than we currently have here. There's a big difference between having a child and you catching the flu, breaking a bone, or getting cancer. The environmental and social impact of having a kid is much larger, and I can see how some folks don't want to subsidize this.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lamarpye|8 years ago|reply
<i> Results—In 2010, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 6.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, and the United States ranked 26th in infant mortality among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel opment countries. After excluding births at less than 24 weeks of gestation to ensure international comparability, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 4.2, still higher than for most European countries and about twice the rates for Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. U.S. infant mortality rates for very preterm infants (24–31 weeks of gestation) compared favorably with most European rates. However, the U.S. mortality rate for infants at 32–36 weeks was second-highest, and the rate for infants at 37 weeks of gestation or more was highest, among the countries studied. About 39% of the United States’ higher infant mortality rate when compared with that of Sweden was due to a higher percentage of preterm births, while 47% was due to a higher infant mortality rate at 37 weeks of gestation or more. If the United States could reduce these two factors to Sweden’s levels, the U.S. infant mortality rate would fall by 43%, with nearly 7,300 infant deaths averted annually. <i>
How much does treating babies with low-birth weight add to the average cost?
[+] [-] lamarpye|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vadym909|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dopeboy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peapicker|8 years ago|reply
I'm sure the quoted price before insurance was probably ridiculous, though.
[+] [-] jonathankoren|8 years ago|reply
Under America's about the only thing you can tell is that total costs are much higher than the rest of the world, and outcomes are actually slightly worse than the rest of the OECD countries.[0]
[0] http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-healthcare-comparison-2...
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/11/17/3647197...
[+] [-] WaxProlix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notadoc|8 years ago|reply