Five months and one day after the birth of our precious daughter the hospital bill arrived. (That was yesterday.) My pregnancy with Zoey was fortunately without incident. I said to a midwife at a regular checkup that I was going for an uneventful pregnancy. She agreed that would be perfect. I had one ultrasound at about 12 weeks. I had monthly visits with the amazing midwives at UCLA (highly recommend them!), and biweekly visits towards the end. My delivery, while definitely eventful, was without medication or complications. I stayed in the hospital two days and received excellent attention from the caregivers there. I felt fortunate to have such a normal pregnancy, delivery and postpartum experience.
Combining the prenatal, delivery and hospital care, can you guess what the total cost for having a baby? $20,000.00 TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS! And I was as routine as they come. Really, why on earth are medical expenses so high? Lots of people have babies. This isn't an obscure procedure. Mine required no critical care. It doesn't seem right that it costs so much money to have a baby. Fortunately we have some insurance coverage. Don't get me started on the heinous, for-profit insurance system our country supports.....
5 comments:
you know what my socialist, left-leaning canadian self is going to say, right?? so i won't dwell ...
but i will compare:
8 years ago, when i had a simple day procedure in slc, the anaesthesiologist. surgeon, facility fees, follow up appointments and supplies ended up costing me over $1100 out of pocket - and i had 90% coverage through my work insurance!
last year, when i broke my leg, i had two surgeries, spent 3 days in hospital, encountered complications due to infection and ended up visiting the e.r. at least 12 times for iv antibiotics - and i never waited more than 1hr during any of those visits. total cost? $150.50 ...
yup, centralized healthcare sucks.
hope your insurance is excellent ... and, regardless, miss zoey is worth every penny - and more!!
stepping off the soapbox ...
NO WAY! I am going to call BS and I think that you need to look into the expenses and be pushy! Seriously, with Josh I was in the hospital for 5 days and then 2 days after delivery and my total for all of it, including Dr's and Anesthsia and all that was about $22,000. I was in the hospital on mega medication for 1 week total and it was about the same as your completely normal/unmedicated delivery. Most normal deliveries that I have heard of are btw. $4000 and $6000.
My normal delivery ran up a $15,000.00 bill. It was offset by insurance coverage, but that price tag included an epidural, visit from the anesthesiologist, around the clock nurses for two days, the delivery where the doctor walked in about 20 minutes before I delivered, my food, and pain relievers after the delivery. My pre-natal care which included bi-monthly visits to a perinatalogist, ultrasounds, a series of tests and other precautionary measures for a high risk pregnancy was about $5,000.00. Our emergency room visit two days after delivery ended up being close to $15,000.00 because we were both put in the hospital for two days. Luckily, we have decent insurance which covered a high percentage of our costs.
That cannot be right....those people mis key all the time! i have received bills for multiple things before and it's usually b/c they just get lazy or type in the wrong code. i always call and make sure that they ran my insurance and have all the correct info, no joke I've saved $100's of dollars just by skimming my bills and making sure I was billed correctly. What the # I'll call them!!!!
I don't think it's insurance companies so much as hospitals charging up the ying yang. My guess is that your insurance actually knocked the cost down quite a bit, and then you had to pay a smaller percentage of that. When my kids were in the NICU for 2 weeks the whole bill from Cedars came to $250,000. Yeah, a quarter million. Per kid. Plus doctor's fees on top of that (billed separately) were tens of thousands. It's so ridiculous it's just beyond words. Luckily we didn't have to pay a penny because of our insurance (and we were maxed out on our annual fees). Being a Canadian myself and looking behind the curtain becuase I have an aenesthesiologist dad who works in both the US and Canada I don't support socialized heath care (trust me, we don't want that) but we desperately need to see health care reform (torte reform for one, and more competition among insurance companies, for starters). Hospitals should NOT be allowed to charge that much.
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