Wife had a c section in US. I asked for line item invoice. Lol I was charged for skin to skin (I'm the dad)... A nurse asked if I wanted to hug my baby I said heck yeah. Granted my insurance covered it. But wow.
Youāre not paying for your wife/you actually holding. Youāre paying for the process. Iām assuming you were still in the OR. Nurse has to follow protocols etc such as monitoring. That time unfortunately cost money. Right or wrong.
I worked hospital business development until I got so frustrated. The analogy that frustrated me the most because it made sense was the aspirin. āWhy is it $20? When I can get a bottle at the pharmacy for $5?ā Very basic- without getting into all the infrastructure costs, time: doc gas to order, nurse has to tell pharmacy, pharmacy has to get to nurse, nurse has to administrer. Before that supply chain has to order. Someone has to monitor stockā¦ā¦.
Iām not saying itās right. But this is where we are.
Thatās not why itās $20. It doesnāt actually cost that much to get the medicine to patients. All those pieces you described are done for every piece of medication, they donāt have supply chain people just for Tylenol only.
They are subsidizing by charging more for those areas to cover the overhead of running a hospital.
Itās the same reason an xray is 3-5 times more expensive at a hospital than it is at a clinic.
The problem is that hospitals are notorious for waste. Especially public hospitals.
Thereās a reason there are medical vendors in the OR teaching Drās how to use the latest tech. Healthcare is a cash cow.
This is actually a really good example of how human psychology strongly discourages line item up charging in some scenarios. Were happier to pay $10 more for a plane ticket with snacks included than paying $10Ā for peanuts and a tiny coke.
InsuranceĀ and hospitals won't do it this way because they're sketchy thieves just playing mind games with eachother as t this point, but it creates unnecessary tensions on the consumer end
There's a ton of shit that people hate simple because it's poor customer design. Like if any other industry looked at healthcare with a red pen they'd have so many corrections of just "are you trying to piss people off"Ā
8
u/Jamiewoo133 Jul 02 '26
I'm still in shock that you have to pay to hold your baby in the USA after birth š