[_spoonman]

Have you ever bought a house here? You go through a 1-2 month (minimum) process of providing financial documents from the past six months or more to mortgage originators, and no one can tell you how much to bring to closing until 24 hours before. It’s insane.

[ta1234567890]

It is crazy. Not a house, but friend had a baby in SF/Bay Area. Neither the hospital, doctor or insurance would tell them how much the delivery would cost, not even an estimate. It took a whole year after their hospital visit to get the bill, it was $85k for a c-section and 3 days at the hospital. Fortunately their insurance took care of most of the bill. But can you imagine getting a surprise bill for $85k a year after the fact? Or not having insurance? Terrifying!

[fmpwizard]

We have two kids (in NC, US)), both were c-sections, we had insurance on the first one, but because she was born in Feb, we had to pay the deductible twice, because even though it was the same pregnancy, it was "over two billing years". And even with insurance we still ended up paying the rest of the bill over 3 or 4 years. Second kid was with no insurance, I think we'll finish paying that one when he turns 10 years old. I don't know about other areas in the US, but around here you can at least setup a payment plan with the hospital and they are 0% interest rate.

[refurb]

Random comment - UCSF will now provide a billing estimate for procedures. They actually look up your coverage and figure out the out of pocket for you based on deductible, co-insurance, etc.

I did this and it was pretty close.

Of course, they don't make any guarantees that's it accurate. But hell, it's a start.

[elicash]

It's worse than this suggests.

If they couldn't provide an estimate because unexpected things happen and they can't predict all services that will be required, that'd be one thing. But they can't even provide a list like, "if you need an aspirin, that costs $X. And if you need..."

[cwhiz]

Well that is actually a pretty tough one. How are they supposed to predict how long the delivery will take or whether the mother will need a c-section? Even if the hospital were able to perfectly predict all of the procedures and line items they still would not be able to tell you what you, the individual, would ultimately pay. Even if they know your insurance information they still would not know how close you are to hitting your deductible or annual out of pocket max. There are a million different things that eventually go into figure out what the end "customer" will actually end up paying.

And just because they "billed" your insurance $85k doesn't mean they were actually paid $85. Billable vs allowable and all that mess.

However, if you went into the hospital and asked for the cash cost of a routine procedure they very likely would be able to give you a close approximation to what you would end up paying.

[itsoktocry]

>no one can tell you how much to bring to closing until 24 hours before. It’s insane.

In some ways, yes.

In other ways, it's insane that people are able to borrow 5-10x their average annual income for an item (the house) that they have very little expertise in analyzing. In that sense, it's a process that is surprising it works at all.

[qes]

Nobody is mortgaging 10x their income. You'll have tough time getting 5x.

[onion2k]

It’s insane.

You spelled "profitable" wrong.

[baking]

This site seems pretty decent: https://www.bankofamerica.com/mortgage/closing-costs-calcula...

Your bank should be upfront about their lender fees, points and origination costs.

Third party fees are either fixed or a simple percentage of the sale price.

The rest can be tricky, but should not be a deal-breaker for a new homeowner. Basically you are just paying the expenses for a short while up front. Interest through the end of the month, real estate taxes through the end of the quarter, Home owners and mortgage insurance and real estate taxes for the escrow account to cover 2-3 months.