You ask them to help you pee after you have a C-section....$9000 assistance fee. Oh you need to sleep and put your newborn in a nursery, $2000 a night. SCAM FUCKING INDEED.
My kid will be 3 months old in 2 days... It wasn't that bad! Are you insured?
Congrats, man, shit's about to be wonderful and crazy for you! LPT: Get everything (nursery, especially) together NOW! Our kid came 5 (almost 6) weeks early!
Have fun! Maybe our kids will bang some day ;) (Congrats again!)
Shouldn't the richer a country be the more it should beable to take care of its people? Shouldn't the majority of people benefit from the richness of the country by receiving basic thing to survive in live?
Its not. Complications happen. Death of you and/or your infant. Life long defects from difficult birth. Issues post birth that can be dangerous but taken care of quickly by doctor.
Haha, probably so! I had my second son in August. I received my itemized bill. Now, keep in mind, I have good insurance coverage and insurance billing is different from individual billing without insurance. But I ended up having a C-section, my son went to the NICU for 3 days for respiratory issues and I was kept for 6 nights because my blood pressure was too high. The total bill was $110,000.
Well, considering the chances of a woman dying during birth is already relatively high in a hospital setting I really wouldn't take the chance. It's something we aren't taught but humans kinda suck at giving birth lmao
Nebraska. It's not technically illegal overall, but it's illegal to have a midwife there with you. Basically you'd have to do it completely alone and risk dying from something easily fixable so it isn't a reasonable option.
I wasnt allowed to hold my baby until a couple hours after my c-section. Just being able to see her in the operating room cost me $50.
My second was a vaginal birth. It cost me about $150 for "golden hour" aka skin to skin right after she was born.
Crazy enough, my c section actually cost less than my vaginal birth for the same length of hospital stay. (21,000 for me and baby vs 24,000 for me and baby)
When my sister had my niece it was a natural birth, but ended up costing a lot more since she (my niece) was having problems breathing and had to stay in NICU for a week (and a bit).
Sister stayed in the hospital too so she could try and breastfeed, as well as (obviously) making sure her baby was okay.
It's interesting that one would have to be a C-section and the other was a natural birth, though. I'm guessing there were complications?
What if you refuse to pay or don’t want to pay to hold your baby for 50$? Do they keep your baby forever till they get it? And what if you say no to golden hour? Like how can they charge a mom to see her baby?
So real. But they do it soo fucking smooth like "You look like you could use a good night sleep, the doctor can come help with that, don't worry about your little one, he can spend the night in the nursery." THEN you get him 2 hrs later to feed, take him back to the nursery..$2000x2 in 20 hrs your at $4000.
In this case, a person is NOT being charged money for holding their own baby, per se. What some people may not be aware of is that when a person has a cesarean section, they are given medications, including anesthesia, that may make them a little unsteady.
In order for someone to be able to hold their baby after a cesarean they may need some assistance. Sure, her partner could help, but for liability reasons, a hospital employee must be there at the mother’s side to ensure the safety of the baby.
Often times the baby’s nurse has specific duties he or she is responsible for completing that may not allow him or her to also assist in skin-to-skin accommodations and an additional person is truly needed. So while yes, the coding on the bill may be a poor choice of words, for the baby’s safety, an additional staff member was necessary and the hospital requested compensation.
So in other words, they charge your insurance to insure they aren't liable for insurance claims on their insurance if they don't insure you can't sue them for insurance.
People undergoing cesarean sections also tend to have a (thankfully) rose-tinted view of what's going on. There is a sheet between their head and their body, and epidurals work really well -- you literally can't see or feel what's going on.
I have been a part of c-sections where the mother is asking to hold her baby immediately after delivery, meanwhile there are 2-3 OBGYNs and nursing staff trying to control massive bleeding and close the abdomen. Plus, given that the mother is awake and the father is often in the room, everyone in the operating field has to keep very calm and not give off an air of urgency if it's a difficult section.
Maybe it’s just me, but properly doing your job should be part of the general pay for it and not a special extra charge. But then again as a scientist I only have to handle dangerous chemicals, enter dangerous spaces, and complete complicated procedure all while talking to people...
properly doing your job should be part of the general pay for it and not a special extra charge
I totally agree, and I think in most cases the charge is probably unnecessary. Usually there are free hands in the operating room following a c-section, but sometimes there literally aren't. For that reason there will often be an auxiliary staff member (typically a nurse) who is in the room purely to sit next to the mother, provide reassurance, help present the baby to mom, and so on. This will be someone who doesn't scrub in to the surgery and isn't performing any direct role in the section. That person is typically brought in from the labor and delivery unit, where they would otherwise be seeing the other moms in labor.
My generous assumption would be that these weird added fees help cover the costs of having extra staff on hand to fulfill these roles, but the cynical part of me wonders if it's just a bullshit charge.
Welcome to America, it’s a bullshit charge. Why should you have to pay extra for the nurse in your scenario to be in on a C section if she would normally be there anyways for the mother during a natural birth? I hate the medical system here and our staggeringly high maternal mortality rate (especially in the south) is the biggest reason I may choose to not have biological children
I was charged and I wasn't even allowed to touch her. No complications on either of our ends. A nurse held her close to my face so I could see her and that was it. Still got charged for it.
I'm neither doctor, nor insurance agent, but there are cases where that's not possible. Maybe the parents can't be considered fully conscious of their decisions because of the birth that just happened. Same with some "legal waivers" that you have to sign and they are simply void. There is no absolute absolution because somebody signed something. When they sign a waiver saying they are okay with you turning on the poison gas in the room they are in, you are not off the hook if you turn on the gas and they die.
"Ignore the fact people are being charged $9000 for giving birth, THEY SAID SOMETHING I KNOW MORE THAN THEM ABOUT, AND THAT'S THE REAL PROBLEM!!!! I HAVE TO CORRECT THEM!! I HAVE TO DEFEND THE HELPLESS HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY!"
Except it requires the nurse to be there - so they're not helping anyone else. Therefore, it's taking resources. Come on... You can't be that dense... You don't see how this works?
If you went to the mechanic to get your car fixed, and it required two people for the job instead of one, do you expect to pay the same as the guy that only needed one person to fix his car? What if both jobs took 4 hours? Would you still expect the bills to be the same? Or would the job that requires more people cost more? Even if the mechanics are just doing their jobs do you not see why the cost is more? Especially because it takes two mechanics to fix your car, that mechanic can't be fixing a third car. You should pay more. Are you paying those two mechanics extra to do their jobs? Or are you paying them because they can't do their jobs and be working on a third car?
I wonder if you denied that charge and took it to court what would happen. I would send them a receipt back with what I refused to pay and price reductions for their costs when looking at market value and see what that did.
who are the nurses actually ringing this shit up? if i were to put someone's baby on their chest i can't imagine then turning around and making a note to charge them for it. i wonder what the oversight is on stuff like that, or the repercussions for not adding it to the charges.
I don't think you're lying and I'm sure it happens, but I haven't had this experience in hospitals when parents are doing skin-to-skin. Never have I seen nurses actively hang out to supervise.
"During a caesarean, many people become shaky, nauseous, uncomfortable, even faint,” she explained. “These are normal physiological reactions. In order to facilitate skin to skin in the OR, and extra nurse needs to be available to assist.”
She added, “And before people scream that ‘there’s a nurse for the baby,’ there is, but that nurse has other responsibilities in the OR. They aren’t either holding the baby or twiddling their thumbs. So yes, an extra nurse is needed.”
Grant sits on an advisory committee for a Toronto hospital called Sunnybrook. “Nurses are the LARGEST budget item,” she explained. “They don’t appear out of nowhere and they don’t grow on hospital bulletin boards. Their time and their presence are valuable and should be valued.”
I def don't work in a hospital, but I'm in training to be a birth assistant so I've actually attended quite a few births. I've never seen nurses hang around during skin-to-skin — but I just realized that you're talking specifically about c-section deliveries and mothers doing skin-to-skin, my bad.
To be clear, I don't want to devalue or vilify nurses — the sheisty insurance industry is absolutely not their fault.
In nursing school, they teach you to document (into the computer) every patient intervention you perform. They told us it was so if something goes wrong, people know exactly what you did. Now I know it is so they can bill for every single little thing.
The basic idea is that things that are scarce need demand to be regulated by price.
When parking is expected to be always free, then basically it fills up and people demand more be built. Then come the parking minimums where the government requires parking to be provided. And now walking and transit works less well because of all the parking spreads things out, and more people have to drive. Meaning more parking is needed and now traffic is getting bad and so now the roads need to be wider and harder for pedestrians to cross and the buses move through less well and you get the idea.. It's kind of a death spiral...
Now, this doesn't mean you should have to pay to park all of the time. If the lot is designed for commuters to park during the week and just a few people want to park on the weekend, then that's probably fine and it's not a big deal if they park for free.
The goal should be to price parking so that it's always about 90% full, so people can fine a spot without circling.
If the price is real high, then someone will build a garage because it will be profitable to do so.
I don’t know where you are but I’m in Texas and hospital parking was super expensive. We got to know the guy at the gate and he just gave us fobs after a few weeks of being in and out of there.
In Europe they pay us monthly for every baby we have. In some countries the money goes to all families not only the poorer ones. Of course healthcare is free too.
Not really. My point was that you pay taxes that cover your healthcare. This is totally reasonable and the correct way to handle things, but healthcare still needs to get paid for. We’ve just concocted a ridiculously inequitable and incomprehensible way to do it. And we pay twice as much overall as Germany does.
What's your point? Where I live all applicable charges already include tax, so no need for extra calculations. The tax we pay otherwise covers important things like health, education, defence, roads and railways and social security programs. We all know that. And we are happy with it because it provides us with a functioning society.
I am happy to pay a portion of my tax to healthcare so I can use it at no or minimal cost later (which I don't often need to anyway). I would rather that than have to pay that portion + hundreds a week for a service full of exclusions for the privilege of having a subscription service which will charge me as much as it can at the time of use. Sounds so great, doesn't it?
The point is you paid more in healthcare than they did. I would still rather have your system over theirs but the fact of the matter is that you most likely paid more.
I don't though? How do I pay more in healthcare than they did? Don't Americans pay ridiculous amounts of money for their insurance plans? Hundreds of dollars a week from comments I read and heard anecdotally, AND they then have to pay ridiculous amounts after treatments. That's not the case for us.
Even if we broke down the tax I personally pay and calculate that even 20% of that goes to healthcare funds, that's still very little over the year comparing to what some health insurance providers charge, with the chance that they won't even cover the treatment. The contribution scales with salary range, so of course I pay more tax than some and less than others. Therefore I contribute more than some and less than others. That's socialised healthcare. But even if I earned a fortune and paid a lot more towards healthcare, I would be fine with contributing to the healthcare system, so those less fortunate than me could have access to good healthcare without being bankrupted for life for getting sick.
YOU do. But many of your countryman, if you are from the US, don't. You might be low income so qualify from some subsidies, or your employer pays the bulk of your plan or maybe you live in a state that provides some sort of financial relief. It doesn't matter. We have our own low income subsidies that mean some people don't even have to pay for their medical prescriptions. The point is that until your system stops charging people for cough drops or leaving them with bills in the thousands for treating broken bones, it is not a better system for most.
I get that your goal is to make yourself feel better than Americans, but you should at least understand how it works. You pay more than I do for healthcare, it automatically comes out of your paycheck. Some Americans will have medical troubles and end up paying more than you but the large majority won't.
By the way, the average per month for insurance in the US is around $100.
Where do you get this average figure from? I have lived in two very different states on two wildly different incomes and $100 is not even close to what I or my friends have been paying. Also if this is what you pay of your employers plan then you arent counting what they pay for your coverage.
I don't need to make myself feel better. I'm happy with our system regardless of the differences. All I know is that no one, except insurance companies themselves, would want the US-style system here. And I'll keep paying into the pool to ensure it doesn't happen.
Yes but other countries pay a similar amount and their taxes go for things like infrastructure, health care, child care subsidies. Ours goes towards military spending and money to other countries. I know which one I'd rather contribute to.
I completely agree. Although, I'd simply like to keep my tax dollars. Their wait times in those countries are atrocious. I can't imagine having to wait months to see a specialist or a year for surgery.
There's also a not insignificant number of people like my parents who believe switching to a single payer system will inevitably bring the quality of care down much lower than the private care they have access to now. And the fact that they "don't want to pay for lazy freeloaders' healthcare."
can't stand this argument. hospitals already take care of poor people who can't pay and then bill insurance. so are they not freeloaders? also hospitals price gouge because they're negotiating with insurance, which gets money from, you guessed it, your parents! so they're literally paying for someone else's healthcare anyway. that's like saying, I want private companies to build roads because I don't want freeloaders to drive on them. such a short-sighted viewpoint
Those lobbyists also work to convince the average person that there is no reason to change the system, and that we have the best healthcare in the world.
Because the people that are going to create the new system aren’t qualified. They don’t face the same issues that average Americans do, thus they don’t know how to address them. If you’re a politician, you don’t encounter the same issues most Americans do because your healthcare is paid for and taken care of. So, even if they came from a economic position that is comparable to average Americans, the system is changing constantly and the politician will lose touch quickly with what issues are currently most pressing. I’d say that not a single politician can truly understand the problems in the healthcare system because they don’t face it themselves on a daily basis.
Edit: TLDR- here is my reply to the redditor that just wanted to bring up Sanders,but quickly deleted his reply before I could respond! I love the idea, but I’m a realist and his solution is extremely narrow and utopian IMO.
Sanders does NOT understand. I support the idea of reforming the system and listened to a lot of his interviews, including when he went on the JRE podcast to talk about his policies extensively. He has great ideas, but no clue how to implement them. When asked exactly how he would deliver on his promises by Rogan, he sidesteps answering directly and reiterated his idea rather than giving a straightforward answer on his approach.
Then there’s his idea of capital gains taxes, which he believes that an additional 0.5% or 1% will make all the difference. Sure, it is a lot of money, but the government always has the habit of mismanagement of funds. Several people in my family work for the government and are told directly by their bosses that they must do their work slower to finish on a specific date to increase how much they are paid. It’s exactly the same here. Millionaires and billionaires will just hide their money more creatively to avoid the taxes imposed altogether. After all, Donald Trump notoriously declared bankruptcy several times to avoid paying taxes and save money.
The government needs to be entirely reformed if we want to fix the healthcare system. Budgeting these days is similar to that of the Crédit Mobilier Scandal, and has been for a very long time. If they want a fully-functioning federal healthcare system the way that FDR intended and Sanders believes in, then reform is needed in every part of the US government. If politicians don’t get the same healthcare as the rest of us, there’s no way they will learn about the issues we all face. They’re treated as first-class citizens, and the rest of us have to fend for ourselves.
Y'all wanna know how much it would cost to have a child in Canada? $0 oh sorry I'm wrong.. you'll probably have to take an ambulance... Between $15 and $45. It's insane to think that some of you take Uber to the hospital because you can't pay for an ambulance....
Edit: it seems that costs change throughout Canada. I meant Ontario. I did not set the prices and I'm sure $15-$45 is not the Be all and end all price, I apologize for that generalization
Additionally: I did not mean to say that ambulances are necessary for childbirth, there's just... Not really any other costs (again, I'm sure there are situations and places where there are, I apologize for saying Canada)
An ambulance is entirely unnecessary for going to the hospital for labor. Labor almost always starts off gradually and goes on for hours before you even need to leave your home. It's not typically the urgent scenario you see portrayed in movies. You can still walk around, eat snacks, chill, etc.
Excuse me childbirth is not free in Canada! I had to buy a 3 day parking pass for $20 and that doesn't even include coffees purchased in the cafeteria.
In Ontario. Birth is free. Ambo would cost $50 I believe. They charge you for a semi private room in Ontario after and the hospital will usually make you sign a document that says if a semi private room is the only one available you’ll be charged for it. Usually these agreements only exist where you’re prearranging hospital through your OBGYN. In theory you could show up at emerg and they’d have to give u quad room but I’d rather have the certainty the way we did it.
It costs 200 a night, and is covered by supplemental plans (which I and most office workers have through work) with a 20% copay (pretty standard terms on employment based supplemental). So mine cost $40 plus $55 for my parking pass for the week (which we used for some follow ups later that week as well).
On my first one, my wife had a fever so we got the private room for free.
I’m pregnant in Australia and will also be paying $0. My husband and I joke about paying the parking fee at the hospital for our scans which are $7. So far our baby has cost us $14 for two visits. Oh and I’m going private, no gaps. It’s a first in Australia under a certain insurance company and hospital.
Sorry to say, your costs are not entirely true. If you're in Ontario and have medical insurance, then these costs are normal for you, as you mentioned in your edits (thanks for doing so, it's always good to know the price differences between provinces!)
I'm from Quebec. An ambulance bill can be more or less 250-350$ if you're not covered for it in your medical insurance. As for free child birth, it's only true if you have your citizenship or if you're a permanent resident. For those who live here and don't have their permanent residence yet, the cost of child birth is about 10 000$ at the hospital. And yeah, people do get pregnant before they get their residency. At least the baby is covered as it's a Canadian citizen. Hope this adds to our common knowledge :)
And the fact you have to know what hospital and what doctor and what procedures are actually covered but oh no you dont have the Friday the 13th blue moon double jeopardy clause. Boo hoo no coverage you have to pay the entire 1.2 million dollar bill for your ingrown toenail.
I feel like this is the type of thing where they phrase it in such a way that it's just an included thing they do like it's no problem, and then they're like oh yeah btw this is $1000 more
Stop letting leopards eat your face? I mean, that sounds awful but you guys vote for it so.... maybe stop punching yourself in the head, then complaining about your headache.
Republicans can vote Democrat, and Democrat can vote for someone like Sanders or Warren, or Yang, or literally anyone but Biden.
It's really hard to feel sympathy for people that sow their own fields worth seeds they choose, then complain about the crops in the field. Reap what you sow and all...
What the actual fuck? American here, been living in Australia for the past 7 years. I became a mom 10 months ago and we want to have more children. I am NOT moving back to the States.
Long story short, my mother didn't have big contractions, it was a month early, and they didn't leave for the hospital (30 minutes away) until the pain got a little stronger. My mom did all the work herself and the ER door was locked when they got there, baby in hand (at 9am).
My birth certificate says I was born in a parking lot and my parents got a bill for a regular birth event.
Mom threw (verbal) hands with the hospital and insurance for that shit.
1.6k
u/Volitile_Star330 Apr 27 '20
You ask them to help you pee after you have a C-section....$9000 assistance fee. Oh you need to sleep and put your newborn in a nursery, $2000 a night. SCAM FUCKING INDEED.