$14,000 Baby

[Miss Piggy]

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.

Holy crap. That is a REALLY high OOP max. Really really high.  I was just telling my parents how much my new work insurance sucks because our OOP max is $6900 (includes two people, but if we had kids, it would be the same because it's a family max). Damn. Your insurance stinks.

[GuitarStv]

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

Ah, the old eugenics argument.  It tends to resonate deep in your gut, but there are serious problems with the logic.  Physically, sure . . . breeding can prevent certain defects.  But physical traits aren't the most important contribution that people bring to our species any more.
 I'd argue that the most important species improvements have all been created by great minds in the last few hundred years.  Would our species really be improved without the contributions of the minds of people like Stephen Hawkings?  Personally, I don't believe so.

[partgypsy]

I don't know when your open enrollment period is, but I would see if there is any way you can change your insurance. It sucks.

I don't have records going back as far as when I had my kids, but don't recall it was more than 2, 3K out of pocket.

And now, Alice Cooper is playing in my head.

[frugalnacho]

I don't know when your open enrollment period is, but I would see if there is any way you can change your insurance. It sucks.

I don't have records going back as far as when I had my kids, but don't recall it was more than 2, 3K out of pocket.

And now, Alice Cooper is playing in my head.

Usually a life event (birth, marriage, divorce, etc) means you can change your enrollment status.  I don't know if he can switch insurance plans when the baby is born, or an only add the baby to the current plan.  Worth checking into though.

When my company was acquired this year at 6 months into our pregnancy I chose the plan with the highest premiums (but only paid 4 months of premiums for 2017) and the lowest OOPM.  When the baby was born I was able to switch it up, but went with the same plan for the same reason. 

[skeeder]

We had home births and it cost about $1500 per kiddo.

[djadziadax]

Don't know if you can call that "good insurance". My insurance is good, since we paid $0 out of pocket for the birth of baby. I reviewed my claims thought and it looks like the hospital charged about 27K for the birth/hospital stay, of which the plan paid out about 17K. So yes, a birth cost that much but sees your insurance paid only 10-20% of that. That is pretty awful.

[DumpTruck]

We had home births and it cost about $1500 per kiddo.

Plus I imagine your quality of life during the ordeal is vs a hospital is worth an incredible value you can't even place $ on

[I'm a red panda]

We had home births and it cost about $1500 per kiddo.

Plus I imagine your quality of life during the ordeal is vs a hospital is worth an incredible value you can't even place $ on

Would someone make me angel food cake during a homebirth? Because that was a pretty awesome part of the hospital experience.
And someone else cleaned up all the blood.

[frugalnacho]

We had home births and it cost about $1500 per kiddo.

Plus I imagine your quality of life during the ordeal is vs a hospital is worth an incredible value you can't even place $ on

Would someone make me angel food cake during a homebirth? Because that was a pretty awesome part of the hospital experience.
And someone else cleaned up all the blood.

I'll bring you angel food cake and clean up blood for $20k

[Louisville]

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

Well then, our recently stagnated mortality rate is a good thing. For the species.

[I'm a red panda]

We had home births and it cost about $1500 per kiddo.

Plus I imagine your quality of life during the ordeal is vs a hospital is worth an incredible value you can't even place $ on

Would someone make me angel food cake during a homebirth? Because that was a pretty awesome part of the hospital experience.
And someone else cleaned up all the blood.

I'll bring you angel food cake and clean up blood for $20k

We had home births and it cost about $1500 per kiddo.

Plus I imagine your quality of life during the ordeal is vs a hospital is worth an incredible value you can't even place $ on

Would someone make me angel food cake during a homebirth? Because that was a pretty awesome part of the hospital experience.
And someone else cleaned up all the blood.

I'll bring you angel food cake and clean up blood for $20k

In my case you'd also need to perform emergency surgery.

I had a friend have a home birth this year for a low risk pregnancy. Her daughter ended up being life flighted to a NICU while she was transferred by ambulance to a hospital. They got sent to different hospitals and she didn't see her daughter for 3 days.  Her midwife wasn't even an RN. They are both lucky to be alive.  So I'm not real interested, even if your angel food cake is better than the hospitals.  (Personally I think giving birth at home would be super uncomfortable. My space isn't set up for it.  The hospital had squat bars, rebozos, peanut balls, tubs, showers- all sorts of things to make birth easier. I'd have to buy all that for home.  Plus the cleaning. And the lack of operating room.) 

I do have another friend who has had successful homebirths though. She had an CNM attending though, not a CM

[Johnez]

Cost me $0 for our first. Kaiser Permanente, employee provided insurance, Southern CA.

After hearing bad things about HMOs I was a bit worried about joining one. Maybe living in a large metro area helps, they've done nothing but impress me every step of the way. I don't think I'll move to a state that doesn't have Kaiser coverage.

[mm1970]

Uh, I'm going to agree with whomever said before that your insurance sucks.

My 2nd childbirth, in 2012, was $14k.  That's the full price, I didn't pay any of it.

Now, that was without an epidural and only 1 day in the hospital.  So let's say you have a vag birth with an epidural and stay 2 nights, then maybe add $4k.

So, $18k.  That's not good insurance.

NOW, you mentioned a follow up operation?  That's extra.  You see, even my good insurance has a "copay" for an inpatient thing, but if you get out and go back in, it resets.

[bryan995]

Wife and I just had our first. 36 hour labor followed by emergency c section. Stayed the full 4 days in the hospital. Total bill was just shy of $60,000...  Not sure how much of that insurance actually paid.  We are very lucky with our health insurance options, chose a HMO only had to pay $250 OOP (hospital admittance deductible).

Premium is ~$1476/mo ($330 my cost) through my employer.
Still crazy expensive. Agree with OP I don’t know how the majority of people can afford this. We are extremely lucky to have he insurance that we do. And sorry OP I don’t know of any tip/tricks to help your upcoming expenses. I’m sure others will.

Congrats and best of luck in the weeks to come. Those first few weeks are rough. Work in shifts if you can. It gets better :)

[Michael in ABQ]

Five kids in the last nine years and the total hospital bills have ranged from about $8-13k. Of that our insurance has actually paid $2-4k and we've paid anywhere from about $20 to $200. All normal births with epidurals on the first couple and one or two nights in the hospital total. Most of our babies were born early in the morning after we've both been up all night long.

My insurance is through the National Guard so it's pretty damn good. If I were going through my company the premiums would be twice as much and we'd end up paying a few thousand out of pocket between the deductible and copays.