$14,000 Baby

[FallenTimber]

How do folks afford to have kids? I’m not talking about diapers, car seats, daycare, or college. Those costs are astronomical in their own right. I’m referring to the simple medical costs.

My wife and I have solid health insurance through my employer of 15 years, and we’re still anticipating an out of pocket cost of over $14,000 for the birth. $7,150 for my wife, and $7,150 for the minor surgery we’ve been told to expect in the weeks following birth.

I had an appendectomy this year, no complications and I was out of the hospital in less than 24 hours, and that already cost us $7,150 out of pocket. So in a period of less than 15 months, we’re going to be paying over $21,000 in medical bills out of pocket. And that’s with good insurance!

This is more of a rant, and I know there are plenty of threads regarding healthcare already, but I can’t help but wonder how folks can afford to have a baby today. Thankfully my wife and I keep an emergency fund, but I never anticipated having to burn through $14,000 of it to have a baby. How many Americans have that kind of money laying around? What about people who have 4 kids? I’m going to become a father in 3 weeks and I’m beyond excited, but the financial costs are absolutely staggering. Everyone says to get sleep now before the baby comes, but those kinds of costs make sleep tough.

[SC93]

.... and the real kicker is that it is an emergency! Did you just find out today she is pregnant? About 15 years ago I knew a lady that didn't know she was pregnant until the day she gave birth.

[VolcanicArts]

$14000 is a pretty accurate sum. I knew a guy whose wife had their second child and he told me it cost him $13000. Of course the costs go up because a lot of times they will keep the baby in the NICU for monitoring.

[inline five]

At my previous employer it was $15. Total. Of course, insurance was $350/month for employee + 1 (med, dental, vision) so not exactly cheap.

I would revisit your thought that you have 'solid' insurance.

[MommyCake]

I agree with inline.  If you decide to have another baby you should find better insurance.  In 2016 my pregnancy/delivery/aftercare cost less than 1500 in copays.  I'm due in about 8 weeks with baby #2 and have spent even less on copays this time around (found out I was actually using the wrong lab for testing last time).

[boarder42]

solid employer health insurance doesnt have a max out of pocket expense of 14k - even HDHPs with HSA have max OOP for families of 6550 you have bad insurance.

most people arent paying that out of pocket.

[ltt]

Something doesn't sound right.  You've already paid out $7150 for your surgery.  Did all of that go toward your family out-of-pocket maxiumum for 2017??  What is your insurance OOP maximum?  The OOP max is not per event, but per year. 

[starbuck]

I also had an appendectomy this year and it cost around $800 out of pocket. Plus $125 for the ER visit. I also had a baby two years ago, and that cost $150 out of pocket. Thankfully no ER visit. The issue is that you have shitty insurance if you really will be paying that much out of pocket.

[Nightwatchman9270]

+1 to above.  Your insurance sucks.  We paid about 15% of what you paid and I would call my policy mediocre at best.  You may even be better off with Obamacare (for now) if you can pay for it with pre-tax dollars.

[Knapptyme]

Blame the hospital system. Our first born cost about $2000, but the bill to the hospital was over $10k. For our second child, we opted for a midwife. With insurance, it was also about $2000, but our employer insurance had gotten worse over the three year difference (went from 80/20 to 70/30 until OOP maximum was met with a higher copay, too). The bill for child #2, however, would have only been $5k for the midwife without insurance at all.

For the naysayers of midwifery, there were emergency services nearby should anything have gone awry.

[wordnerd]

Sorry to hear that! My birth cost us $150 out of pocket, but the billed charges were ridiculous. I think it was $15k for a birth with no interventions (no even an iv) and one night in the hospital (room sharing with the baby).

[I'm a red panda]

What is your out of pocket max? That seems to be the issue here.
$7k for delivery/hospital stay seems fairly reasonable. It sounds like there are other health issues if you are planning for another surgery, so that isn't a "standard" baby cost.  However, it seems like once you have paid that too, you should be reaching the out of pocket max for sure, right?  Is the baby due this year? - so your surgery already counts towards that max? That is really really high to have over $20k in out of pocket.  I'd rethink your insurance.  I hope all is well with your baby and that the baby's surgeries go well.

If your out of pocket max isn't over $20k, then maybe you are misunderstanding the cost estimates and you won't actually have to pay as much as you think? Assuming it all gets done before the new year? If baby is due next year, then your appendectomy is moot.  (And why does everything cost you $7,150? That's weird.)

My husband is on separate insurance from the baby and I. The premiums for me to be on my husband's insurance or vice versus are so high though it makes sense for us to stay on separate plans. His appendectomy cost him his $5,000 out of pocket max.  My prenatal care and delivery cost me my $3,000 out of pocket max, and then when it became a family plan, baby has reached about half of her out of pocket max (another $3,000).  I'm trying to get in all my random appointments- things like dermatologist, etc before the new year when my deductibles and out of pockets reset.

Due to bizarre circumstances, my first delivery cost about $15k (out of network), and insurance reimbursed about 10% of that. I was happy to only pay about $4k this time.

I really figured this thread was going to be about daycare. That's costing us about $14k in our medium cost of living area.

[Marley09]

I definitely feel you on this.  When we had our first child, unforeseen complications ended in a c-section and then an 8 day NICU stay. I was super healthy and had no complications during my entire pregnancy until the very end (literally when I went into labor).  I am a planner, so I had worked out which health plan would be the best for us between the PPO (lower deductible, higher payments) and the HDHP (higher deductible, lower payments) based on a typical pregnancy and birth...and wow were we shocked when our little guy had other plans in mind about how he was born.  Lets just say it was very scary to receive a bill for over $100k from the NICU saying that their services are out-of-network.  We worked it out to get it covered under in-network, but the damage was done....after $5k family deductible and then 80% co-insurance, we hit our max out of pocket of $11k.

I thought that I had good insurance then through my employer, but then I moved jobs and got pregnant again.  We scrimped and saved due to our previous birth experience and when our daughter was born, we barely hit our $2,600 deductible.  Crazy how different our two birth experiences were.

[simonsez]

Was this care in-network?

Here is a snippet from my insurance brochure:
"The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) limits annual out-of-pocket expenses for covered services from Network providers, including deductibles, copayments and coinsurance, to no more than $6,650 for a Self Only enrollment, and $13,300 for a Self Plus One or Self and Family enrollment. Your specific plan limits may differ."

I'd look up the catastrophic protection section of your insurance.

[Mustache ride]

Your OOP max must be sky high. As others have said, I think your insurance is terrible.

[hoping2retire35]

Um, twins and the later single was both about $3500 each time, for our costs.

[FallenTimber]

Thanks for all of the replies here, I appreciate all of the insight. I think you all must be right in that my insurance isn't as great as I thought. Before we got married, my wife was on an Obamacare plan that was costing her 5x as much as our current insurance, and it was a catastrophic plan with a very high deductible and poor coverage even after meeting the deductible. So when she was able to join mine (Blue Cross Blue Shield), it was comparatively a big step up in coverage. But apparently it's not as great as we thought.

I had my appendectomy on New Year's Eve (December 31, 2016) at an in-network hospital. I left the hospital on January 1, 2017. I was billed over $30,000 for the appendectomy which included a relatively minor surgery and less than 24 hours of hospital care. There were no complications or infections--it was all textbook. I hit my $1,750 deductible, and then insurance kicked in at 70% / 30%. My 30% of the bill resulted in hitting the out of pocket max of $7,150.

However, our insurance benefit year spans from May 1 - April 30 of each year, so none of the appendectomy payment counts towards the pregnancy. So even though our max out of pocket is $14,300, the timing of everything is what's going to put us over $21,000 in a period of one year.

There is of course the chance that the pregnancy will not cost as much as I'm anticipating. But I've lost all faith in hospital billing and have assumed the birth is going to cost over $24,000, at which point it wouldn't matter if the birth costs $24,000 or $240,000--we would still hit our OOP max. The average childbirth hospital bill ranges from $4,000 - $37,000 for vaginal delivery, and $8,000 - $71,000 for a c-section, so I was basing my numbers off those. The surgery scheduled for after the birth is relatively minor, but I also thought an appendectomy was minor and that was still a $30,000+ procedure. That's why I'm assuming we'll be hitting our $14,300 OOP max. Perhaps we'll get lucky and the hospital charges will be less than anticipated.

As for the $14,300 max OOP, we just received a prenatal care bill and letter in the mail last night from Blue Cross Blue Shield stating, "$1,002.35 has been applied to your $14,300.00 program in network out-of-pocket limit." That's what caused me to start this thread.

[PoutineLover]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

[I'm a red panda]

Sucks that the appendectomy just fell outside the year. 

Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised. I thought we'd meet my $6k family out of pocket max, but my daughter's bills were less than I thought they would be (though she didn't need a surgery.)

Good luck with your new baby! Best wishes to your wife for a smooth delivery.

[ltt]

OP, yes, okay that makes more sense...you are not running from January-December.  And for group insurance, the 70/30 is not that great for in-network coverage. 

And, yes, hopefully your hospital bills will be less for the birth and surgery.

[COEE]

Congrats on the addition!  It's an exciting time!

I recall our insurance also being very expensive when we had our child 7 years ago.  Daughter ended up in the NICU for a week with single digit blood sugar levels.  Wife ended up in the hospital for a week as well due to complications.  I think our out of pocket max was something like $10.  But then there's a lot of things insurance 'didn't cover' so we ended up spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $12.  I don't recall exactly because I wasn't tracking my finances at all then.  This was actually the event that got me interested because I had the hospital calling me at work!

I was glad to leave that job with that crappy insurance.  And it's gotten worse since I've left!

Wishing your family the best!

[Marley09]

FallenTimber-  I am sure that you are aware of this, but it is worth hearing again; when you get the hospital and delivery bills, especially the larger ones, call the billing number and ask if there is a discount to pay in full.  I try this with every medical bill I get over $100 and most of the time, they will give me a 10-20% discount.  If you are looking at $14,300 max out of pocket, a mere 10% decrease is a huge savings.

[Million2000]

I feel for you and can relate. All in all, my son's birth this year cost us around $7,000 in medical costs but that was over two separate years ($1100 ultra sounds, $75 prenatal vitamins anyone?) so we paid the deductible/out of pocket costs twice. Looking back my wife thinks she should have waited longer before first seeing the doctor about the pregnancy, that would have saved $3,000 but everything is clear in hindsight.

I understand about not sleeping even before the child was born, I had the same anxiety. Just plan and make sure the medical facilities and professionals your wife is going to see are in network. The hospital we went to was horrible and it's amazing the utter lack of sanity that goes into billing and administration. I'll always remember my wife screaming in pain from labor and the nurse forcing her to sign 20 pages of paperwork so she could get an epidural (wouldn't let me sign). My wife is from and technically is still a citizen of Russia. The next baby we have will be born there, for the amount of money we spent here she'd get VIP treatment there. The US medical system is a cruel joke, I only hope it collapses soon so it can be rebuilt into a better system. 

[FireHiker]

OMG, I guess I'll stop complaining about our "awful" insurance. Our max annual OOP is $6k. I had no idea that OOPs could be so much higher; is your insurance provided through your employer or on the exchange? Asking so I can re-figure my expectations for the future.

With my kids, my OOP cost was: $10 for first (Pacificare HMO back in 2001), $250 (Health Net HMO in 2010), and $4000 (homebirth with midwife, not covered by insurance at all). Based on my personal experiences, the $14,000 figure sounds really high, but I think the reality is that my experiences were below the average.

[GuitarStv]

We live in a country where access to health care is considered a fundamental right, not an expensive side option.

[Roland of Gilead]

We live in a country where access to health care is considered a fundamental right, not an expensive side option.

It is pretty cheap in the USA if you can manage your income.   Our policy is $69 a month for a married couple in their mid 40s and has a $550 max OOP

That probably isn't too far off from Canada levels, especially since the cost of living in Canada is higher elsewhere (gasoline is not $2.80 a gallon in Canada).

[Altons Bobs]

The law has a limit on individual and family out of pockets, you will not get to that high at all unless you're saying for 2016, 2017, and 2018 combined and you guys had/will have multiple surgeries/procedures, then that's a different story.

[Nightwatchman9270]

For the naysayers of midwifery, there were emergency services nearby should anything have gone awry.

I hope by "nearby" you meant "same building".  Babies go bad fast with cataclismic results.  Don't know too many midwives who can perform a csxn.

[GuitarStv]

For the naysayers of midwifery, there were emergency services nearby should anything have gone awry.

I hope by "nearby" you meant "same building".  Babies go bad fast with cataclismic results.  Don't know too many midwives who can perform a csxn.

We had a midwife for my son's birth, and chose to do the delivery in the hospital because of the likelihood of complications.  Things went wrong, and the midwife transferred care over to the obstetrician pretty seamlessly about half way through.

[I'm a red panda]

I used midwife care, and the cost was no different than if I had used an OB.
But I did not have a home birth. 

Personally, I don't think you need a surgeon for routine pre-natal care. I was thrilled with the midwives.  The appointment costs were the same, but the time spent with the midwife was much greater than the OB for my previous pregnancy. Some appointments were an hour long.


I did end up having an emergency c-section under general anesthesia when my daughter's heart rate plummeted, due to early placental separation. My midwife did assist on the surgery.  During labor, anytime her heart rate would alarm, anyone in the hospital would come in- sometimes my midwife made it in first, sometimes and OB, sometimes an MFM (who is an OB). I was not billed separately for each person to enter the room though, which surprised me based on previous hospital stays where doctors charged when standing in the doorway saying "how are things today" and then walking away.

[boarder42]

We live in a country where access to health care is considered a fundamental right, not an expensive side option.

It is pretty cheap in the USA if you can manage your income.   Our policy is $69 a month for a married couple in their mid 40s and has a $550 max OOP

That probably isn't too far off from Canada levels, especially since the cost of living in Canada is higher elsewhere (gasoline is not $2.80 a gallon in Canada).

thats very state specific. and as you said requires you to manage your income. in our state we have crap for healthcare options regardless of you income level. - we may move when we retire if this F'd up system isnt fixed

[SKL-HOU]

That is not a good insurance by any means. When i had my baby, i paid 1250 for 2011 oop, a little less for 2012 oop (i was in the hospital bed stay a few days before new years then a day after). My baby was born new years day (at 25 werks). Spent 98 days in the NICU and the bill was around 500k, i only paid 1250 oop. My premiums were maybe 100$ or so every 2 weeks for a PPO.

[SC93]

The real part that everyone has over looked that matters over the long haul is that he said he is taking from their emergency fund. This isn't an emergency. Taking from Peter to pay Paul has never worked for anyone yet... although everyone who has tried tends to think they are the exception, but they aren't. You had 9 months to save for it. I'm just trying to help you stay on the right track here.... you can't take from the emergency fund unless it is an emergency. :)

[frugalnacho]

Sounds like you have a terrible insurance plan.  Also wtf would they run a fiscal year that doesn't match up with the calendar year? That's insanity.

My current health insurance is also terrible.  My annual premiums are about $10k.  This is considered "affordable" because they only look at the individual cost of insurance, not the family cost - aka the "family glitch".  My insurance would be exceedingly affordable for just me, and that's how it's tested, but if you move to the family plan the cost jumps about 7X the individual cost.  I cannot qualify for subsidies on the open market because my plan is considered "affordable".

We just had a baby 3 weeks ago.   We haven't received any bills yet.  Wife went to the ER due to a car accident about 8 weeks ago, also haven't received any bills for that yet.  I have EOB posted by my insurance, but no bills have made it my way yet.  Looks like we'll be on the hook for our OOPM for my wife ($3k).  No idea if anything is getting billed to the baby, so possibly another $3k for him.  In total we've racked up about $20k in bills ($11.5k for car accident resulting in ER, and about $8.5k for the birth).

Luckily for me the employer is new so I'm only actually paying premiums for the last 4 months of 2017 but still getting the full benefit.  I'm switching to the newly available HDHP with HSA starting in 2018.

We also spent about $40k doing fertility treatment over the past 4 years.

Babies are fucking expensive. 

[Blonde Lawyer]

The real part that everyone has over looked that matters over the long haul is that he said he is taking from their emergency fund. This isn't an emergency. Taking from Peter to pay Paul has never worked for anyone yet... although everyone who has tried tends to think they are the exception, but they aren't. You had 9 months to save for it. I'm just trying to help you stay on the right track here.... you can't take from the emergency fund unless it is an emergency. :)

People use the term "emergency fund" in a lot of different ways.  We have a savings account that has a sum of money in it that we rely on for both true emergencies (job loss, accident, etc.) as well as larger purchases that are outside of our regular budget.  I'm having home repairs done currently.  These were anticipated.  They will come out of my savings account and I have included such repairs in my mental budget for how big that fund needs to be.  I'll also direct more of my money there rather than my investments until it is restocked for the next issue that crops up.

You likely use your emergency fund in a different way from OP.  Both are just fine. Also, he's not borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.  He's using money he saved and will likely replenish those savings.

[inline five]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

[inline five]

Thanks for all of the replies here, I appreciate all of the insight. I think you all must be right in that my insurance isn't as great as I thought. Before we got married, my wife was on an Obamacare plan that was costing her 5x as much as our current insurance, and it was a catastrophic plan with a very high deductible and poor coverage even after meeting the deductible. So when she was able to join mine (Blue Cross Blue Shield), it was comparatively a big step up in coverage. But apparently it's not as great as we thought.

I had my appendectomy on New Year's Eve (December 31, 2016) at an in-network hospital. I left the hospital on January 1, 2017. I was billed over $30,000 for the appendectomy which included a relatively minor surgery and less than 24 hours of hospital care. There were no complications or infections--it was all textbook. I hit my $1,750 deductible, and then insurance kicked in at 70% / 30%. My 30% of the bill resulted in hitting the out of pocket max of $7,150.

However, our insurance benefit year spans from May 1 - April 30 of each year, so none of the appendectomy payment counts towards the pregnancy. So even though our max out of pocket is $14,300, the timing of everything is what's going to put us over $21,000 in a period of one year.

There is of course the chance that the pregnancy will not cost as much as I'm anticipating. But I've lost all faith in hospital billing and have assumed the birth is going to cost over $24,000, at which point it wouldn't matter if the birth costs $24,000 or $240,000--we would still hit our OOP max. The average childbirth hospital bill ranges from $4,000 - $37,000 for vaginal delivery, and $8,000 - $71,000 for a c-section, so I was basing my numbers off those. The surgery scheduled for after the birth is relatively minor, but I also thought an appendectomy was minor and that was still a $30,000+ procedure. That's why I'm assuming we'll be hitting our $14,300 OOP max. Perhaps we'll get lucky and the hospital charges will be less than anticipated.

As for the $14,300 max OOP, we just received a prenatal care bill and letter in the mail last night from Blue Cross Blue Shield stating, "$1,002.35 has been applied to your $14,300.00 program in network out-of-pocket limit." That's what caused me to start this thread.

My wife's $50k surgery cost us $15 hospital co-pay.

Seriously look at getting different insurance.

[Acastus]

Fallen,

This does not sound like solid health insurance. It sounds like the catastrophic health insurance I have. Once you pay the 7k out of pocket, you should go down to paying 20% in the 80/20 part of the plan. That will last for many 1000's of expenses. Are you saying your wife will have 35k in health costs, of which you pay 14k? Hopefully, it is not that bad.

My plan caps the maximum cost per person at around 7k, as well. The family can be out of pocket for a total of 14k, but once you  pay a bunch for 1 person, they are free for the rest of the year. See if you have something similar.

[I'm a red panda]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

[frugalnacho]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

That somehow was that many of them died.

[inline five]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

[frugalnacho]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

the 90's isn't thousands of years ago.  We've made amazing progress in the field of medicine. The costs the last couple of decades are absurd and unsustainable, and is a separate issue.

[simonsez]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

The vast majority of infant deaths occur in babies born that weigh under 1000g.  More premature/underweight babies can survive the birthing process than before due to technology advancements.  Fetal deaths do not count in the infant mortality calculation but if a severely unhealthy baby is born and dies a day or a week or a month later it does count.  Looking at a simple number doesn't tell the whole story - especially a solid number that is contributing to a fairly rectangularized life expectancy.  i.e. This is a good thing, the vast majority of us survive the early years and die when we are old.

As for historical ages, I don't understand your point.  What exactly are you advocating?  Not having to "worry" about expensive care from medical professionals also comes with reducing female education/independence while we all move back to an agrarian society?  Yeah, people didn't go to doctors because they didn't exist/have reasonable access to them but I don't think ignorance is bliss when 50% of all children are dead by age 5 (which btw is why antiquity life expectancies from birth are so low, it's not that they didn't have old people or everyone dropped dead at 30, it's that so many died early on).  The demographic transition is definitely a good thing, not something we want to reverse so we can ignore soaring healthcare costs.

Anyway, I feel like pointing to IMR is a red herring within healthcare talks.  The bulk of the costs comes from end-of-life care, not the beginning.

[FallenTimber]

Thanks for all of the advice and insight here. I'll certainly be looking into changing insurance. Obviously it's too late to change at this point in the pregnancy, but live and learn I guess. Lesson learned here.

For those not fully understanding the $21,450 figure I mentioned: $7,150 of that was from January 2017 for my appendectomy--my individual max out of pocket was reached, and we've already had to pay that. The policy renewed in May. Our baby is new due in December 2017, so the max OOP is reset. Now, depending on hospital charges (mentioned in my last post), we may be on the hook for max out of pocket for my wife ($7,150), plus surgery for our son ($7,150), bringing us to this year's max family OOP of $14,300. That would bring our total out-of-pocket expenses to $21,450 in a 12-month period.

I appreciate the tip on calling to get a discount on paying in full. I never realized that, but will absolutely be doing that in the future.

The real part that everyone has over looked that matters over the long haul is that he said he is taking from their emergency fund. This isn't an emergency. Taking from Peter to pay Paul has never worked for anyone yet... although everyone who has tried tends to think they are the exception, but they aren't. You had 9 months to save for it. I'm just trying to help you stay on the right track here.... you can't take from the emergency fund unless it is an emergency. :)

I think you're splitting hairs here. For reference, $7,150 of our emergency fund was used for an appendectomy, which I would classify as an emergency. Another $7,150 is now dedicated to a critical surgery that we just learned about last week thanks to a visit with a specialist--also an emergency. We expected to spend around $7,000 in medical bills this year, and we're now looking at over $21,000. Thankfully we keep more than that in liquid emergency funds, so we'll be just fine and we'll replenish our emergency fund next year.

The point of my post wasn't to say we were unprepared for these unexpected costs. My wife and I have worked extremely hard for over 6 years preparing financially for having kids. I just know that most Americans don't have an extra $7k, $14k, or $21k laying around when they have a baby, so I was wondering how they do it. Now I realize that many of them have much better insurance than I do.

[I'm a red panda]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

I was referring to the "thousands of years ago" you mentioned. Not the 90s.
Healthcare costs are out of control, yes.   But to say we can do all this childbirth stuff without bothering with doctors visits is just ridiculous. Clearly you place a massive value on women's lives.  Quite honestly prenatal care in the US still has a very long way to go; but heck, we are miles ahead of "thousands of years", even a few hundred years ago in terms of maternal, and infant outcomes

[Gone Fishing]

I'm a little late, but welcome to the forum!  I'm sorry your insurance is lacking and the bad timing. I always figured our Megacorp insurance was decent enough, but after seeing some of the two digit out of pocket numbers posted, some obviously have it much better than others.  Good on you for being prepared for what life throws at you.

Those without good insurance or cash may qualify for Medicaid.  If they do not, the hospital may discount their fees and/or place them on a payment plan.  If the patient does not pay, the bill may get sent to collections and ruin their credit, but for someone who already has bad credit, it is no great loss.  There are also non-profit organizations that help with birthing related expenses, particularly those focused on anti-abortion.

I obviously dont know the details, but It may not be too late to seek a second opinion on the follow up surgery.  Couldn't hurt.

[inline five]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

I was referring to the "thousands of years ago" you mentioned. Not the 90s.
Healthcare costs are out of control, yes.   But to say we can do all this childbirth stuff without bothering with doctors visits is just ridiculous. Clearly you place a massive value on women's lives.  Quite honestly prenatal care in the US still has a very long way to go; but heck, we are miles ahead of "thousands of years", even a few hundred years ago in terms of maternal, and infant outcomes

We CAN do it; it's not ridiculous to think otherwise. How did we get to this point? Somehow mankind thrived without tens of thousands of medical bills when having babies in caves.

Is it better today? Sure I don't think you'll ever see anyone arguing differently. Going from 10% death rate to 0.5% is an accomplishment however it has sort of stagnated there now for the past few decades.

[frugalnacho]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

I was referring to the "thousands of years ago" you mentioned. Not the 90s.
Healthcare costs are out of control, yes.   But to say we can do all this childbirth stuff without bothering with doctors visits is just ridiculous. Clearly you place a massive value on women's lives.  Quite honestly prenatal care in the US still has a very long way to go; but heck, we are miles ahead of "thousands of years", even a few hundred years ago in terms of maternal, and infant outcomes

We CAN do it; it's not ridiculous to think otherwise. How did we get to this point? Somehow mankind thrived without tens of thousands of medical bills when having babies in caves.

Is it better today? Sure I don't think you'll ever see anyone arguing differently. Going from 10% death rate to 0.5% is an accomplishment however it has sort of stagnated there now for the past few decades.

No they didn't, many of them died.  "We" didn't all get to this point, only those lucky enough to have survived cave births without any medical intervention (which is not all of them).

[inline five]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

I was referring to the "thousands of years ago" you mentioned. Not the 90s.
Healthcare costs are out of control, yes.   But to say we can do all this childbirth stuff without bothering with doctors visits is just ridiculous. Clearly you place a massive value on women's lives.  Quite honestly prenatal care in the US still has a very long way to go; but heck, we are miles ahead of "thousands of years", even a few hundred years ago in terms of maternal, and infant outcomes

We CAN do it; it's not ridiculous to think otherwise. How did we get to this point? Somehow mankind thrived without tens of thousands of medical bills when having babies in caves.

Is it better today? Sure I don't think you'll ever see anyone arguing differently. Going from 10% death rate to 0.5% is an accomplishment however it has sort of stagnated there now for the past few decades.

No they didn't, many of them died.  "We" didn't all get to this point, only those lucky enough to have survived cave births without any medical intervention (which is not all of them).

Survival of the fittest improves the species

[I'm a red panda]

This whole thread is making me so glad I live in Canada. New parents should really not have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting their baby out alive. It's absolute insanity.

Somehow humans went thousands of years not even visiting a doctor once and having babies, it's kind of nuts how far we've taken it.

To be fair, a lot of them died. Both Moms and babies.
We don't consider that to be an acceptable outcome anymore.

Look up infant mortality rates, only small incremental improvements have been made since the 90's, when healthcare costs were still very reasonable and it wasn't really on anyone's radar.

I was referring to the "thousands of years ago" you mentioned. Not the 90s.
Healthcare costs are out of control, yes.   But to say we can do all this childbirth stuff without bothering with doctors visits is just ridiculous. Clearly you place a massive value on women's lives.  Quite honestly prenatal care in the US still has a very long way to go; but heck, we are miles ahead of "thousands of years", even a few hundred years ago in terms of maternal, and infant outcomes

We CAN do it; it's not ridiculous to think otherwise. How did we get to this point? Somehow mankind thrived without tens of thousands of medical bills when having babies in caves.

Is it better today? Sure I don't think you'll ever see anyone arguing differently. Going from 10% death rate to 0.5% is an accomplishment however it has sort of stagnated there now for the past few decades.

No they didn't, many of them died.  "We" didn't all get to this point, only those lucky enough to have survived cave births without any medical intervention (which is not all of them).

Survival of the fittest improves the species

We should get rid of healthcare entirely then.  Why should only women be dying? Stop treating men too!