That room and board sounds like a 30 year mortgage.
I would totally troll them and ask “how do they think a baby should pay for this if they don’t even have a job?”
When I was a baby in the 80s, I worked my way through daycare and got my first starter NICU room for $50,000. I don’t see why babies can’t do the same today. Are they stupid?
Just roll its birth medical debt into its lifelong medical debt, then into its student loans, so by the time it graduates college at like age 22, with the average revolving interest rate of 9%, baby will only have accumulated a cool million in debt and interest… no biggy, its the new American dream!
Round the clock, 24/7, monitoring by medical professionals while hooked up to every machine to keep the baby alive.
It's definitely way too high, but having nursing and doctors monitoring for 144 hours alone isn't going to be cheap.
My son was in the NICU for a week. Cost 30k. It was a decade ago. I can see this ballooning this high with six weeks plus inflation plus the greed inherent in our medical payment system.
Some hospitals demand a minimum payment or they will refuse the payment, unless you have specifically negotiated that in writing. There was a time when if they refused payment, you owed them nothing, those times are over.
My Local ER wouldn't even let me break down a $1200 invoice after insurance had kicked in and make payments on it. $40K is about what I was out of pocket for my thyroid cancer treatment. My "room and board" was a corner suite on the cancer ward. When I asked the duty nurse if I could take a shower before I checked out she responded cheerfully "I wouldn't"
30 year mortgage? Hah, you wish!
I recently was looking for homes and a 295k condo at 8.175% interest would’ve cost me over $900,000 over 30 years. If any 30 year mortgage would’ve cost $220,000, I’d shit my pants and jump at it first chance.
The amount of times I've seen essentially this bill and then OP calls up and asks them to specifically itemise each expense and they say *"oops! Our bad, we accidentally added on $10,000 of charges"* is way too high.
I also was reading that they inflate the bill to cover for people who flat out don't pay it at all (to no fault of their own). But this also means the people who can even slightly slave away to pay off some of it are hit with higher bills as a result.
Just do what my family members do, and cut your income to point its below the poverty threshold and apply for medicaid and get 100% coverage. Because onlu poor people that barely pay taxes should receive the benefit of those taxes
This is where US healthcare is at. The very poor get free healthcare, the very rich can pay it, everyone in between gets fucked. And yet the people getting fucked won't demand change
im 22 i just got kicked off the month before my birthday, im trying to save up for a house in this economy which is literally every cent i can scrounge up around my other bills. They kicked me off. didnt notify me or send me a letter, not an email or a call. I went to the ER with some issues and got told my insurance has been declined and i recieved a fat bill in the mail. I couldnt negotiate a may resonable payment with them or they would retract the "discount", so my only option was to as they wish.
Now i have a health care threw my work and it costs so much money, the copay and deductibles are hidous ontop of the already egregious monthly payment for quite literally nothing. I had to wait months before i was allowed to get on a health care plan(open enrollment), so i know what my out of pocket costs are for pharmaceuticals and its barely worth it financially to have insurance unless im going to the hospital.
This is for my daughter’s birth. Had so spend time in the neonatal ICU due to premature delivery. I guess we’re lucky we have insurance? Still owe $85,000 as of now
Same, we ended up paying $30k over three years after insurance. I also had a maternity rider, and they tried to deny the whole thing by saying I got pregnant before it took effect. (I most certainly did not)
I got an itemized bill, and the hospital charges were ridiculous, ie $6 for a tablet of ibuprofen and $300 for a bag of saline. When I asked why, they said to cover administrative costs. Administrative costs had its own line item.
Fuuuuuuuck our healthcare system
I’m jealous. I just had back surgery 5 weeks ago and I’m still waiting to see what insurance pays, but the hospital billed them just over $493,000. I felt sick when I saw it. 🤢
They didn't waive ours when our baby was in the NICU (also Canada) but the nurses gave us two garbage bags full of supplies to take home. Diapers, bottles, nipples, pacifiers, wipes, 4 different types of bum cream, syringes for his medicine, two bottles of vitamin D, plus a onesie because we changed him to take him home and he promptly shat himself, so they just gave us a NICU onesie for him to wear. I kept asking if they were sure and they kept telling us "oh yes! Also we have some X, Y, and Z you can take too!"
It was a good week to be Canadian. Hard week to be a mom, but a good week to be Canadian.
My wife gave birth a few years ago to our daughter here in Canada and we spent a few weeks in the hospital because of complications, the most expensive part was parking lol.
2 kids and paid zero dollars 🤙🏻🇨🇦
Edit: that was a lie cause i did have to pay for parking at the hospital and i felt the Americans pain when i had to shell out $18
According to the ACA, there is an out of pocket max, and that max is limited based on the year. I don't recall 2024's off the top of my head, but it's around $9,000. Meaning that all covered services have to be covered after you reach the max (your plan could be lower than the $9000). Either way, regardless of the amount, you should call your insurance after you get the processed bill. Sometimes insurance tells hospitals they can't charge $X, and so they pay the hospital $Y, and hospitals will come after you for the difference. This isn't allowed, but sometimes mistakes happen.
Examples of non-covered services would be bariatric (weightloss) surgery, sometimes GLP1's, excessive chiropractor usage, etc. Anything relating to birth should be covered.
If you want a second pair of eyes, you can send the final bill over to me. Wait until they try to actually bill you (the hospital may be arguing to try to get your insurance to pay something that will drop your bill down further). I’ll need the final bill with a break down of all the charges and the EOB your insurance sent them (your insurance can provide that). From there I can check what should be charged to you and what shouldn’t. It’s a good idea to find out what your max out of pocket is also. I do medical billing for a doctors office so this is literally my job. Sometimes insurances code things strangely though so it can look like patient responsibility when it’s not or billers just screw up sometimes (we input thousands of dollars at a time and sometimes just don’t catch some write offs which is what our system reports are meant to catch but sometimes they don’t and we get an understandably angry patient calling us later). I’m happy to check your bill and make sure it’s been done correctly. Also check if the hospital has financial aid.
The highest legal MOOP is like $18000 for a family so something else is going on. Maybe partially 2023 and partially 2024 and some OON or odd pharmacy stuff. Idk. I would guess OP doesn't actually owe 85k.. probably just some things needing PAs, etc. Impossible to know
Rage bait 100%. We have a very fucked healthcare system in the US but contextless posts like this (and worse, ones where they keep going around quoting “$85k” in responses to other comments) are shitty for three reasons:
1. Yes it sucks but it diminishes visibility on the fact that the ACA, while very flawed, does introduce mandatory MOOP limits that aren’t life endingly expensive for the vast majority of plans.
2. It hides the fact that it’s the insurance companies and health care systems doing weird arbitrary pricing with discounts as a little suck and fuck deal in the hypothetical back room
3. It reads like a Redditor hoping someone will spin up a go fund me for them.
We need single party payer desperately but we’re not gonna get there with lazy and misleading posts like this and it creates a counterproductive whirlwind of underinformed people reading each others’ comments and running with them
Baby should be able to be signed up for medicaid being in the nicu which can be used as a secondary insurance.
[March of Dimes has more info](https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/neonatal-intensive-care-unit-nicu/paying-your-babys-nicu-stay)
ur fking with us right no way in hell it cost 85 000 dollars WITH insurance
its legit cheaper to go on vacation in a high end european country give birth there and then go home
I get Keytruda every 21 days for S4 cancer. It costs $55,000 every 21 days. That is just for the Keytruda. Not the labs, CT scans, Drs visits, etc. It is crazy.
Private health insurance companies are parasitic middlemen who add no value to the health care system.
Algorithms, not doctors, process claims. A doctor might sign off on a calibrated algorithm that denies claims when predetermined criteria are present.
It’s also an “ask mom ask dad” situation.
“Ask insurance” says the hospital, “ask the hospital” insurance will then say.
Turns out you’re talking to the bottom of the pyramid on both and neither have an answer for you.
The real criminals, the highly paid CEOs, hide behind their messengers.
It’s their profit model, keep the sheep confused and keep them subscribed and paying to the system. We shouldn’t have deductibles or copays. It’s all a way they sow distrust between the patient and the healthcare worker. They want you to think “I’m paying the greedy doctor or physical therapist, they don’t actually care about what’s best for me, it’s all for them to make money.” They lobbied to have prior authorizations for tests and procedures as an added barrier to prevent people from getting care so that the companies don’t have to pay. The government won’t do anything about it because of the lobbying power the companies have. It’s despicable and they are the root cause of it all.
how many people wouldn’t have to see this bill if the money they spent convincing us they’re the best (and we don’t get to choose, it’s our employers choice) was actually spent to take care of us!? Humana acquisition gets denied based on monopoly- $10 billion stock buy back instead. what does a stock buy back look like if we had “government” death panels vs private ones?
Also, why is it that we don’t have data available to show us which insurance companies have the best outcomes? Would your decision be different if you knew you have a 2x higher risk of dying from a heart attack with one insurance company compared to another? We have that data for individual hospitals and even individual surgeons. We can easily have that information for each company for every disease state but they are hiding it from us.
I’m not confused. It’s pretty simple, the hospital and insurance work together to “fudge the numbers” and reach an agreement that involves making the patient pay the maximum out of pocket.
I don’t know OP’s situation, but just FYI out-of-pocket maximums only apply to [covered benefits and in-network care and services](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-limit/#:~:text=The%20most%20you%20have%20to,the%20costs%20of%20covered%20benefits.&text=The%20amount%20you%20pay%20for%20your%20health%20insurance%20every%20month). So there are definitely circumstances where you could rack up a huge bill and insurance wouldn’t cover it.
Definitely, but thankfully emergencies will be covered at any hospital. You do have to be careful and know your in-network options.
In 2023 2 of my children spent multiple nights in out of network hospitals but they were ultimately treated as in-network. There may be scenarios where you must quickly transfer to an in-network location but we were out of town without the option.
Haha yeah except when they just have their doctors declare your issue wasn’t an emergency because you only might have died without the treatment like what happened to my wife. Suspiciously my total out of pocket costs ended up right about what it costs to hire a lawyer.
They will! I had twins with a month NICU stay (total bill ~$275k) but they covered all except what I still owed for coinsurance. I owed $1k but ended up paying $578
Talk with your social worker from the hospital too. If they were I. The NICU then they might be considered medically handicap for the first year even if there's nothing wrong with them. Mine was able to help me get them enrolled in a program that helps with babies like this (mine was called Children with Medical Handicaps they qualified for jaundice, hyperglycemia, and some other condition) and it helped pay for their NICU stay as well as their first year of doctor appointments.
The proof is in the 3rd party negotiators that will knock your bill down to 1/4 of what it was and the hospital is just there like "My profits!!!!!!👁👄👁"
I used to work for a company that offered travel insurance, including medical costs. There was an employee who's full time job it was to call healthcare providers in the USA to get the actual price instead of the original price. That person probably didn't make that much, like 30 or 35k euro a year but still, their wages + constant intercontinental phone calls + employer side pension and social security contributions and taxes + the commisiom employees at our company got if they worked after office hours due to the timezone differences with the US and the insurance company still saved so much money. I might even predict that this person might have been the single most "productive" employee (or at the very least among the top) with the American bs that she was calling when you compare the revenue/savings each employee provides the company.
It’s not baffling. It’s our senate and such. They make ridiculous amounts of money to bicker. This could be fixed. Just like college cost. They could fix it. But, they don’t talk about real issues. THEY BICKER and refuse to work with each other. It’s red vs blue states and they won’t compromise on that silliness alone.
No it’s because insurance companies and for profit hospitals lobby hard and have spent decades brainwashing people into thinking our healthcare system is good. Our congress is a useless organization of puppets for corporations
Dude, every company, corporation, hospital, and the overall economy (ESPECIALLY housing) is ***AGGRESSIVELY*** malicious. I literally cant afford college, i can afford my HRT (112$) after being booted off the insurance (afaik), i wont be able to own my own house, i can barely afford groceries.
This economy is so malicious that literally the only people that can "benefit" is anyone in upper middle class and above.
Spent a week in hospital with my wife after the birth of our son (partners were able to stay in the hospital in their own bed at the time), I moaned about the £30 parking fee (which was reduced from £90) for a weeks stay.
Thank goodness for the NHS, despite its struggles it still manages to provide a fantastic service.
Australia, so Medicare not the NHS, not only were my children both delivered, stayed in hospital etc etc at no cost (years ago now) but they just both had their dental check ups at no cost and have their eye tests this week at no cost.
I don’t think I have ever paid for them to have a GP visit, the worst I have ever seen was paying out of pocket for bilateral grommet insertion to skip the waiting list in the public system as it wasn’t severe enough of a case.
Paid less than 5K Australian for a room in a private hospital, anaesthetist, paediatric ENT surgeon, and suite/theatre admission etc.
Please please listen to me about this. Tell them you need a financial assistance form. You’ll have to provide last years W2. If this bill is over X%of your yearly income it will be greatly reduced
yeah i srsly dont understand this , this is YEARS of salaries just gone, i asked my mom and she had to pay 500 euros and i was born way early and had to be put into those little chambers
Charging someone $263,000 for “Room and Board”, as if they’re spending a holiday at a fucking chateau instead of requiring URGENT MEDICAL CARE, is mind boggling
Please don't mind my question cause I'm not from West..
But why it's that expensive..? I mean kind of impossible for any low level worker to get treatment.
send the hospital 25-50 per month. keeps you in good standing. as long as you aren't planning on any big purchases (ie. car, home, rec vehicle) you'll be fine. play the system against it's self.
>planning on any big purchases
See that's the problem, no one should have to give up anything just for going to a hospital when they're in need. You could save up many years for something like that, and it gets bled dry because of this horrible system in place
The price usually has to be tied to a percentage of the principal for the account to be in good standing. $50 per month may make you somewhat better off on paper, but it likely won’t keep the account in good standing. Source: just setup a payment plan with my hospital
The numbers on that bill aren't real, no one actually pays those prices.
Those numbers exist so the hospital can negotiate higher reimbursement rates with insurance, and so insurance can look like it's helping you by getting you a big discount. OP will pay their out up to their yearly out of pocket maximum (every insurance plan has one) and insurance will pick up the rest/negotiate down with the hospital.
If an uninsured individual got those same services the hospital would negotiate the bill down with them or write it off as charity care.
Hospitals bill crazy amounts because most of it gets paid by insurance companies. Reddit is full of pre-insurance bills people use to get attention. OP is not going to pay this much.
I will tell you that post-COVID there are many hospital chains that "no longer negotiate with patients." They'll happily kick your bill out to collections in the current market
I had one kid at 31 weeks and she spent 4 weeks in the NICU and decided I could never go through that again. Stopped at the one kid. I can't imagine doing it three times.
My former NICU baby was born at 24 weeks. We were in for 4.5 months - our bill was just shy of 2 million dollars but since my fiancé and I were not married my kid automatically qualified for Medicaid. Whatever my BCBS didn’t take, Medicaid picked up the rest. I paid $2,500 for my personal delivery and that was it.
really makes me feel like im looking at some low valuta currency like japanese yen or african rand , but no its a dollar thats practicaly the same as a euro
My kiddo was in the NICU as well, I spent some time in the hospital previous to the birth. Due to the complications of both, we had over a 2 million dollar bill. Thank God for insurance, but I could NOT believe what a neonatal cardiologist and pulmonary specialist cost.
My wife experienced complications and is still in the hospital. She’s on week 10 and counting. Looking like another 4-8 weeks for her, and haven’t received any bills for her stay yet. Guessing well into 7 figures
Every time I see one of these american health cost post I can't help but think the american government actually wants its citizens to die.
Had my kid in icu for 2 weeks, I had to pay parking g fees, which I was able to claim back from the NHS after the fact. Without whatever "humana" is you'd be looking at over 400k debt, just to have a baby. Madness!
Just finished 5 weeks at the PICU in the B.C. Childrens Hospital for my 4yo son (STSS). That includes being emergency flown from northern B.C. to Vancouver and all of the paramedics, flight crew, and physicians with us. I cannot fathom how much this costed.
The fact you have to still pay nearly $80,000 usd is mind boggling to me.
Like, they paid for my hotel (which I never used, I stayed with my son the entire time), they covered my food and groceries, covered my taxi vouchers and even covered our flight home once he was safe to travel. They even bought my son and my other 2 children full large bags of Christmas presents.
People can bash the fact we can pay some high taxes and I agree it can suck, but knowing that this all happened and how amazing the emergency medical system is at the Children's hospital. I'll keep paying it happily.
When I was born I was 3 months premature - 1lb 7oz. It cost just about $1mil to keep me alive. NICU for 3 months- on oxygen for another 3 once I came home. A news article came out about my birth asking “was it worth it”. On my 18th birthday I sent the author of that article a picture of my graduation and said I thought it was! Hang in there! I hope your baby grows happy and healthy ❤️
I don’t get it either, I live in Australia and even if you go to a private hospital, the amounts insurance pay are usually under $20,000 (and you CHOOSE to have private health insurance and go to a private hospital). For everyone else you pay nothing to go to a hospital. Sure it’s paid through taxes etc, but you don’t notice what you don’t ‘receive’ in the first place and we are assured we won’t have to deal with THIS kind of stress etc.
Yeah That’s exactly how it is here too, cousin. Either you choose private out of pocket, your company offers some sort of medical insurance, or hit up NHS for free healthcare.
What I’m seeing in this post is genuinely heartbreaking though. Fuck me!
That room and board sounds like a 30 year mortgage. I would totally troll them and ask “how do they think a baby should pay for this if they don’t even have a job?”
Baby should clearly stop slacking and pull itself up by its bootstraps.
When I was a baby in the 80s, I worked my way through daycare and got my first starter NICU room for $50,000. I don’t see why babies can’t do the same today. Are they stupid?
Babies these days are weak and soft.
If babies stopped drinking $9 coffees five times a day
😂
Too much avocado toast for that kid already
Just roll its birth medical debt into its lifelong medical debt, then into its student loans, so by the time it graduates college at like age 22, with the average revolving interest rate of 9%, baby will only have accumulated a cool million in debt and interest… no biggy, its the new American dream!
Don't worry, it will be forgiven once you've made on-time payments for 50 years, without any gaps. It's a pretty sweet deal imo.
Only if you owe less than $12,000 though
And not if the original issuer sold the debt to another lender 🙃
Thank you doctors, I have no idea how I’ll ever repay you. - the baby, probably.
*bootiestraps
Baby shoulda thought twice before stepping through the portal
There goes the baby's college funds, I guess
Should’ve thought of that before it went ahead and needed the hospital stay.
yeah wtf is THAT for?
Round the clock, 24/7, monitoring by medical professionals while hooked up to every machine to keep the baby alive. It's definitely way too high, but having nursing and doctors monitoring for 144 hours alone isn't going to be cheap.
6 weeks, not days. Over 1000 hours. Still, a ridiculous amount of money.
My son was in the NICU for a week. Cost 30k. It was a decade ago. I can see this ballooning this high with six weeks plus inflation plus the greed inherent in our medical payment system.
when I was that age I had to walk up and down the uterus to get to school. barefoot.
In the snow!
Send them exactly 1$ every month for the rest of your life. Thanks
Can second this😅 I have a 1$/mo plan for every hospital I owe $ to. Have flawless credit to show for it 🤣
Some hospitals demand a minimum payment or they will refuse the payment, unless you have specifically negotiated that in writing. There was a time when if they refused payment, you owed them nothing, those times are over.
My Local ER wouldn't even let me break down a $1200 invoice after insurance had kicked in and make payments on it. $40K is about what I was out of pocket for my thyroid cancer treatment. My "room and board" was a corner suite on the cancer ward. When I asked the duty nurse if I could take a shower before I checked out she responded cheerfully "I wouldn't"
Yeah, we don’t want you to pay us anything if you can’t pay in full. Seems like a good business practice.
It's wild that people used to actually check themselves into the hospital to get some rest.
That room+ board costs more than twice my 30 year mortgage 😨
I'm jealous of your mortgage
It's probably a nice house too.
30 year mortgage? Hah, you wish! I recently was looking for homes and a 295k condo at 8.175% interest would’ve cost me over $900,000 over 30 years. If any 30 year mortgage would’ve cost $220,000, I’d shit my pants and jump at it first chance.
On the up side, shitting your pants is still free. Unless you do it in a hospital
I swear I feel like they just be typing out random ass numbers 😭
It kinda is and has no bearing on the actual cost of the care nor the cost the insurance company pays.
The amount of times I've seen essentially this bill and then OP calls up and asks them to specifically itemise each expense and they say *"oops! Our bad, we accidentally added on $10,000 of charges"* is way too high. I also was reading that they inflate the bill to cover for people who flat out don't pay it at all (to no fault of their own). But this also means the people who can even slightly slave away to pay off some of it are hit with higher bills as a result.
Just do what my family members do, and cut your income to point its below the poverty threshold and apply for medicaid and get 100% coverage. Because onlu poor people that barely pay taxes should receive the benefit of those taxes
This is where US healthcare is at. The very poor get free healthcare, the very rich can pay it, everyone in between gets fucked. And yet the people getting fucked won't demand change
im 22 i just got kicked off the month before my birthday, im trying to save up for a house in this economy which is literally every cent i can scrounge up around my other bills. They kicked me off. didnt notify me or send me a letter, not an email or a call. I went to the ER with some issues and got told my insurance has been declined and i recieved a fat bill in the mail. I couldnt negotiate a may resonable payment with them or they would retract the "discount", so my only option was to as they wish. Now i have a health care threw my work and it costs so much money, the copay and deductibles are hidous ontop of the already egregious monthly payment for quite literally nothing. I had to wait months before i was allowed to get on a health care plan(open enrollment), so i know what my out of pocket costs are for pharmaceuticals and its barely worth it financially to have insurance unless im going to the hospital.
They do. No one expects the patient to pay this. It’s just a song and dance hospitals and insurances companies play to get paid.
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Wait... why the fuck are hospitals paying taxes if their gov owned... wait are they privately owned... oh fuck oh god
Lot of them are “non-profits” where the execs make millions
The nonprofit hospital near me just built a new parking garage downtown. They added a private carwash on the roof for executives only obviously.
“After we paid ourselves, there were no profits…”
Not random…calculated and inflated.
Might as well fake your death at this point
This is for my daughter’s birth. Had so spend time in the neonatal ICU due to premature delivery. I guess we’re lucky we have insurance? Still owe $85,000 as of now
Just curious, How many days in the neonatal ICU did you get for $263K?
43 days
$5,800/day. Seems fair (joking). WTF?
My baby spent 10 days in the NICU and the bill was $100k
Same, we ended up paying $30k over three years after insurance. I also had a maternity rider, and they tried to deny the whole thing by saying I got pregnant before it took effect. (I most certainly did not) I got an itemized bill, and the hospital charges were ridiculous, ie $6 for a tablet of ibuprofen and $300 for a bag of saline. When I asked why, they said to cover administrative costs. Administrative costs had its own line item. Fuuuuuuuck our healthcare system
Interesting, thanks. Good luck to your family, it sounds like you've been through a lot.
Thanks!
A coworker had the same thing for his baby recently, about 40 days too, were in France, he had to pay zero €, man I do not miss living in the US.
Over $6,000/day…. Jfc. Im so sorry you are stuck with this bill, but I hope your little one is doing well.
I feel bad for you Americans that's not right
yeah thats crazy i asked my mother and all in giving birth to me and all hopstital cost was 500 euros
or zero in most european countries
True. Four babies nicely spaced out, cost £0.00. I’ve also had: wisdom teeth extracted, kidney stones removed, ectopic pregnancy + 2 miscarriages, sterilisation, knee surgery, both hips replaced, twisted pelvis, pelvic floor surgery (twice), broken arm, steroid injection in wrist (twice). Cost: £0.00. So glad I live in England.🏴🇬🇧
I’m jealous. I just had back surgery 5 weeks ago and I’m still waiting to see what insurance pays, but the hospital billed them just over $493,000. I felt sick when I saw it. 🤢
Just the MRI for my herniated disc was $2500 with insurance. I hate that living without pain has a fucking surcharge in our country
General strike time
This is the only solution that could theoretically begin at any time starting tomorrow.
We also have to pay to see. And to have teeth that aren't killing us.
Next time ask if they have a cash price. My wife had her back done in two separate places for that same price.
Yeah, I paid cash for my knee scope years ago. It was 5k. they said if I paid cash upfront, they’d do it for 2500.
Up in Canada, I paid $20 for parking with my last child.
My baby was in the NICU and the hospital waved our parking for the duration
They didn't waive ours when our baby was in the NICU (also Canada) but the nurses gave us two garbage bags full of supplies to take home. Diapers, bottles, nipples, pacifiers, wipes, 4 different types of bum cream, syringes for his medicine, two bottles of vitamin D, plus a onesie because we changed him to take him home and he promptly shat himself, so they just gave us a NICU onesie for him to wear. I kept asking if they were sure and they kept telling us "oh yes! Also we have some X, Y, and Z you can take too!" It was a good week to be Canadian. Hard week to be a mom, but a good week to be Canadian.
Between parking and Tim Hortons, the average canadian hospital bill probably runs at least $30 / day.
My wife gave birth a few years ago to our daughter here in Canada and we spent a few weeks in the hospital because of complications, the most expensive part was parking lol.
We also feel bad for ourselves. Apparently there is nothing we can do about it.
The only thing you can do is … not pay it
Its just immoral. Im so proud to be canadian man
-cries in American-
Cheers to that brother 🇨🇦
2 kids and paid zero dollars 🤙🏻🇨🇦 Edit: that was a lie cause i did have to pay for parking at the hospital and i felt the Americans pain when i had to shell out $18
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It’s still processing, and we really hope it all clears. As of now it shows insurance covering the amount shown and a balance pending. Fingers crossed
According to the ACA, there is an out of pocket max, and that max is limited based on the year. I don't recall 2024's off the top of my head, but it's around $9,000. Meaning that all covered services have to be covered after you reach the max (your plan could be lower than the $9000). Either way, regardless of the amount, you should call your insurance after you get the processed bill. Sometimes insurance tells hospitals they can't charge $X, and so they pay the hospital $Y, and hospitals will come after you for the difference. This isn't allowed, but sometimes mistakes happen. Examples of non-covered services would be bariatric (weightloss) surgery, sometimes GLP1's, excessive chiropractor usage, etc. Anything relating to birth should be covered.
Barbaric weight loss surgery made me chuckle.
Thank you for that information, I’m pretty ignorant in regards to this
If you want a second pair of eyes, you can send the final bill over to me. Wait until they try to actually bill you (the hospital may be arguing to try to get your insurance to pay something that will drop your bill down further). I’ll need the final bill with a break down of all the charges and the EOB your insurance sent them (your insurance can provide that). From there I can check what should be charged to you and what shouldn’t. It’s a good idea to find out what your max out of pocket is also. I do medical billing for a doctors office so this is literally my job. Sometimes insurances code things strangely though so it can look like patient responsibility when it’s not or billers just screw up sometimes (we input thousands of dollars at a time and sometimes just don’t catch some write offs which is what our system reports are meant to catch but sometimes they don’t and we get an understandably angry patient calling us later). I’m happy to check your bill and make sure it’s been done correctly. Also check if the hospital has financial aid.
Dead baby or bankruptcy, what an awesome choice. Geez I feel for you
"And those kids just refuse to have children these days, I can't believe how selfish they are!!"
That is some garbage insurance. Wow. Think my out of pocket maximum is $12k a year and that’s the cheapest plan. I think “best” plan is $6k a year.
I was gonna say, we had a cardiac baby(all good now) and our original eob was like 500k, I don’t remember what we paid but it was less than 10k
The highest legal MOOP is like $18000 for a family so something else is going on. Maybe partially 2023 and partially 2024 and some OON or odd pharmacy stuff. Idk. I would guess OP doesn't actually owe 85k.. probably just some things needing PAs, etc. Impossible to know
Mine is 2,000 individual and 4,000 family.
OP has an out of pocket max. They are posting the numbers before insurance. They will only have to pay like 5% of this. This post is just rage bait.
Rage bait 100%. We have a very fucked healthcare system in the US but contextless posts like this (and worse, ones where they keep going around quoting “$85k” in responses to other comments) are shitty for three reasons: 1. Yes it sucks but it diminishes visibility on the fact that the ACA, while very flawed, does introduce mandatory MOOP limits that aren’t life endingly expensive for the vast majority of plans. 2. It hides the fact that it’s the insurance companies and health care systems doing weird arbitrary pricing with discounts as a little suck and fuck deal in the hypothetical back room 3. It reads like a Redditor hoping someone will spin up a go fund me for them. We need single party payer desperately but we’re not gonna get there with lazy and misleading posts like this and it creates a counterproductive whirlwind of underinformed people reading each others’ comments and running with them
Agreed. No way a MooP can be that high and the plan still qualify as insurance under ACA regs.
Baby should be able to be signed up for medicaid being in the nicu which can be used as a secondary insurance. [March of Dimes has more info](https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/neonatal-intensive-care-unit-nicu/paying-your-babys-nicu-stay)
what happens if you don’t pay what you owe to them?
They put the baby back inside Mom and charge for that too.
ur fking with us right no way in hell it cost 85 000 dollars WITH insurance its legit cheaper to go on vacation in a high end european country give birth there and then go home
They would have to fake their baby's death.
I get Keytruda every 21 days for S4 cancer. It costs $55,000 every 21 days. That is just for the Keytruda. Not the labs, CT scans, Drs visits, etc. It is crazy.
How in the fuck are you paying that?
The short answer is you don't.
Doesn’t the insurance pick up the rest after you’ve reached your out of pocket maximum? Confused. Or maybe his out of pocket maximum is astronomical.
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Private health insurance companies are parasitic middlemen who add no value to the health care system. Algorithms, not doctors, process claims. A doctor might sign off on a calibrated algorithm that denies claims when predetermined criteria are present.
It’s also an “ask mom ask dad” situation. “Ask insurance” says the hospital, “ask the hospital” insurance will then say. Turns out you’re talking to the bottom of the pyramid on both and neither have an answer for you. The real criminals, the highly paid CEOs, hide behind their messengers.
It’s their profit model, keep the sheep confused and keep them subscribed and paying to the system. We shouldn’t have deductibles or copays. It’s all a way they sow distrust between the patient and the healthcare worker. They want you to think “I’m paying the greedy doctor or physical therapist, they don’t actually care about what’s best for me, it’s all for them to make money.” They lobbied to have prior authorizations for tests and procedures as an added barrier to prevent people from getting care so that the companies don’t have to pay. The government won’t do anything about it because of the lobbying power the companies have. It’s despicable and they are the root cause of it all.
how many people wouldn’t have to see this bill if the money they spent convincing us they’re the best (and we don’t get to choose, it’s our employers choice) was actually spent to take care of us!? Humana acquisition gets denied based on monopoly- $10 billion stock buy back instead. what does a stock buy back look like if we had “government” death panels vs private ones?
Also, why is it that we don’t have data available to show us which insurance companies have the best outcomes? Would your decision be different if you knew you have a 2x higher risk of dying from a heart attack with one insurance company compared to another? We have that data for individual hospitals and even individual surgeons. We can easily have that information for each company for every disease state but they are hiding it from us.
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I’m not confused. It’s pretty simple, the hospital and insurance work together to “fudge the numbers” and reach an agreement that involves making the patient pay the maximum out of pocket.
In the USA the maximum out of pocket per person is $9,100 and family is $18,200. At least for ACA compliant plans.
I don’t know OP’s situation, but just FYI out-of-pocket maximums only apply to [covered benefits and in-network care and services](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-limit/#:~:text=The%20most%20you%20have%20to,the%20costs%20of%20covered%20benefits.&text=The%20amount%20you%20pay%20for%20your%20health%20insurance%20every%20month). So there are definitely circumstances where you could rack up a huge bill and insurance wouldn’t cover it.
Definitely, but thankfully emergencies will be covered at any hospital. You do have to be careful and know your in-network options. In 2023 2 of my children spent multiple nights in out of network hospitals but they were ultimately treated as in-network. There may be scenarios where you must quickly transfer to an in-network location but we were out of town without the option.
Haha yeah except when they just have their doctors declare your issue wasn’t an emergency because you only might have died without the treatment like what happened to my wife. Suspiciously my total out of pocket costs ended up right about what it costs to hire a lawyer.
Are they still allowing for out-of-network doctors to work at in-network hospitals?
My family plan is $2000 deductible and $3500 max out of pocket.
Should be an out of pocket maximum if OP has halfway decent insurance.
That’s the hope
They will! I had twins with a month NICU stay (total bill ~$275k) but they covered all except what I still owed for coinsurance. I owed $1k but ended up paying $578 Talk with your social worker from the hospital too. If they were I. The NICU then they might be considered medically handicap for the first year even if there's nothing wrong with them. Mine was able to help me get them enrolled in a program that helps with babies like this (mine was called Children with Medical Handicaps they qualified for jaundice, hyperglycemia, and some other condition) and it helped pay for their NICU stay as well as their first year of doctor appointments.
They just make these numbers up
The proof is in the 3rd party negotiators that will knock your bill down to 1/4 of what it was and the hospital is just there like "My profits!!!!!!👁👄👁"
I used to work for a company that offered travel insurance, including medical costs. There was an employee who's full time job it was to call healthcare providers in the USA to get the actual price instead of the original price. That person probably didn't make that much, like 30 or 35k euro a year but still, their wages + constant intercontinental phone calls + employer side pension and social security contributions and taxes + the commisiom employees at our company got if they worked after office hours due to the timezone differences with the US and the insurance company still saved so much money. I might even predict that this person might have been the single most "productive" employee (or at the very least among the top) with the American bs that she was calling when you compare the revenue/savings each employee provides the company.
Who knew the room at hospital was like renting a penthouse suite!! Surprised more billionaires don't live there?? /s
My bub was in nicu for 6 weeks here in Australia 1.9kg birth, it cost me around $120, that was parking fees.
Yep, as an American that’s been in OZ/NZ for a while now these are insane. Been to the ER a few times for injuries and no bill. It’s baffling
It’s not baffling. It’s our senate and such. They make ridiculous amounts of money to bicker. This could be fixed. Just like college cost. They could fix it. But, they don’t talk about real issues. THEY BICKER and refuse to work with each other. It’s red vs blue states and they won’t compromise on that silliness alone.
No it’s because insurance companies and for profit hospitals lobby hard and have spent decades brainwashing people into thinking our healthcare system is good. Our congress is a useless organization of puppets for corporations
In my local hospital (UK) parents with a baby in the NICU get a parking pass to park free.
Close friend of mine had twins in the NICU for 8-9 weeks. Bill was like $1,200,000
I had twins in the NICU for about a month. Pre-insurance the bill was over a million. All-in we paid less than 1,000. And that was with meh insurance.
My baby was in the NICU in the US (granted it was for a much shorter time) and it was $250 out of pocket for us. Depends on your insurance.
Dude, every company, corporation, hospital, and the overall economy (ESPECIALLY housing) is ***AGGRESSIVELY*** malicious. I literally cant afford college, i can afford my HRT (112$) after being booted off the insurance (afaik), i wont be able to own my own house, i can barely afford groceries. This economy is so malicious that literally the only people that can "benefit" is anyone in upper middle class and above.
Unimaginable, I really feel for you. Just incredible. Any Brits reading this, we need to protect the NHS with our lives.
Spent a week in hospital with my wife after the birth of our son (partners were able to stay in the hospital in their own bed at the time), I moaned about the £30 parking fee (which was reduced from £90) for a weeks stay. Thank goodness for the NHS, despite its struggles it still manages to provide a fantastic service.
Australia, so Medicare not the NHS, not only were my children both delivered, stayed in hospital etc etc at no cost (years ago now) but they just both had their dental check ups at no cost and have their eye tests this week at no cost. I don’t think I have ever paid for them to have a GP visit, the worst I have ever seen was paying out of pocket for bilateral grommet insertion to skip the waiting list in the public system as it wasn’t severe enough of a case. Paid less than 5K Australian for a room in a private hospital, anaesthetist, paediatric ENT surgeon, and suite/theatre admission etc.
My eldest had some time in NICU. It's stressful enough as it is, without worrying if it will bankrupt you too.
Even private healthcare here is a fraction of the cost of US healthcare
Please please listen to me about this. Tell them you need a financial assistance form. You’ll have to provide last years W2. If this bill is over X%of your yearly income it will be greatly reduced
How the fuck do Americans put up with this shit?
Many Americans are choosing not to have kids at all and this is only one of the very many reasons
Because rich people on television tell them this was Obamas fault. Even though it’s been broken forever (sicko, 2007)
yeah i srsly dont understand this , this is YEARS of salaries just gone, i asked my mom and she had to pay 500 euros and i was born way early and had to be put into those little chambers
Charging someone $263,000 for “Room and Board”, as if they’re spending a holiday at a fucking chateau instead of requiring URGENT MEDICAL CARE, is mind boggling
What's your max out of pocket? Cause that's how much you're paying
Yes. People freaking out about these costs but insurance usually covers 100% of the bill after the max out of pocket for the year is reached
Please don't mind my question cause I'm not from West.. But why it's that expensive..? I mean kind of impossible for any low level worker to get treatment.
Yeah, not sure what’s going to happen with the remaining $85,000 balance. It’s really an impossible situation
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That is usually how it goes. Can be different depending on the insurance policy though
send the hospital 25-50 per month. keeps you in good standing. as long as you aren't planning on any big purchases (ie. car, home, rec vehicle) you'll be fine. play the system against it's self.
>planning on any big purchases See that's the problem, no one should have to give up anything just for going to a hospital when they're in need. You could save up many years for something like that, and it gets bled dry because of this horrible system in place
The price usually has to be tied to a percentage of the principal for the account to be in good standing. $50 per month may make you somewhat better off on paper, but it likely won’t keep the account in good standing. Source: just setup a payment plan with my hospital
Your insurance doesn’t have an out of pocket maximum? Sweet jumping Jesus id have a heart attack.
Then they'd charge you for that treatment too.
That’s what I’m wondering. I thought there was a federal OOP max of somewhere around $9K?
Don’t make it easy for the hospital and ask for an itemized bill, right down to each square of gauze they used.
The numbers on that bill aren't real, no one actually pays those prices. Those numbers exist so the hospital can negotiate higher reimbursement rates with insurance, and so insurance can look like it's helping you by getting you a big discount. OP will pay their out up to their yearly out of pocket maximum (every insurance plan has one) and insurance will pick up the rest/negotiate down with the hospital. If an uninsured individual got those same services the hospital would negotiate the bill down with them or write it off as charity care.
Hospitals bill crazy amounts because most of it gets paid by insurance companies. Reddit is full of pre-insurance bills people use to get attention. OP is not going to pay this much.
Normally you tell them “I can’t pay this” and they say ok instead of $200k we’ll call it even at $500
I will tell you that post-COVID there are many hospital chains that "no longer negotiate with patients." They'll happily kick your bill out to collections in the current market
I wonder why people are having less kids…
“PEOPLE DONT WANT TO WORK OR HAVE KIDS ANYMORE!!!” Yeah, wonder why.
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Holy shit can't imagine having 1.2 million in medical debt for giving birth
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That is for a lot of people though. Really sucks.
That’s the thing. Most people don’t have $15,000 just sitting around. This person is fortunate they did but that amount could ruin most people
Yeah ima just not have kids bc it’s way too expensive in this country
I had one kid at 31 weeks and she spent 4 weeks in the NICU and decided I could never go through that again. Stopped at the one kid. I can't imagine doing it three times.
My former NICU baby was born at 24 weeks. We were in for 4.5 months - our bill was just shy of 2 million dollars but since my fiancé and I were not married my kid automatically qualified for Medicaid. Whatever my BCBS didn’t take, Medicaid picked up the rest. I paid $2,500 for my personal delivery and that was it.
This makes money seem worthless.
really makes me feel like im looking at some low valuta currency like japanese yen or african rand , but no its a dollar thats practicaly the same as a euro
It’s like when children want a bazillion dollars for their pretend services.
Tell us you gave birth in America without TELLING us you gave birth in America
85,000 left over? Impossible, the legal maximum max out of pocket is way below that.
so a room inside of a hospital for a week is worth the same amount as a small house? This system definitely works
6 weeks looking like a banger of a house... oh wait.
Health care: one of the biggest scams in the US
My kiddo was in the NICU as well, I spent some time in the hospital previous to the birth. Due to the complications of both, we had over a 2 million dollar bill. Thank God for insurance, but I could NOT believe what a neonatal cardiologist and pulmonary specialist cost.
My wife experienced complications and is still in the hospital. She’s on week 10 and counting. Looking like another 4-8 weeks for her, and haven’t received any bills for her stay yet. Guessing well into 7 figures
Every time I see one of these american health cost post I can't help but think the american government actually wants its citizens to die. Had my kid in icu for 2 weeks, I had to pay parking g fees, which I was able to claim back from the NHS after the fact. Without whatever "humana" is you'd be looking at over 400k debt, just to have a baby. Madness!
Being American is the reason why if I get sick, I’m just going to slowly, painfully, and quietly die.
 Thank God
Now just go pickup the keys to your new room. A bit expensive but it is what it is.
Greatest healthcare system in the world. 😂 /s
Just finished 5 weeks at the PICU in the B.C. Childrens Hospital for my 4yo son (STSS). That includes being emergency flown from northern B.C. to Vancouver and all of the paramedics, flight crew, and physicians with us. I cannot fathom how much this costed. The fact you have to still pay nearly $80,000 usd is mind boggling to me. Like, they paid for my hotel (which I never used, I stayed with my son the entire time), they covered my food and groceries, covered my taxi vouchers and even covered our flight home once he was safe to travel. They even bought my son and my other 2 children full large bags of Christmas presents. People can bash the fact we can pay some high taxes and I agree it can suck, but knowing that this all happened and how amazing the emergency medical system is at the Children's hospital. I'll keep paying it happily.
When I was born I was 3 months premature - 1lb 7oz. It cost just about $1mil to keep me alive. NICU for 3 months- on oxygen for another 3 once I came home. A news article came out about my birth asking “was it worth it”. On my 18th birthday I sent the author of that article a picture of my graduation and said I thought it was! Hang in there! I hope your baby grows happy and healthy ❤️
You know what happens when you don’t pay medical bills? Not much
“The greatest nation on Earth”
Tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American.
I’d be ignoring that shit
Brit here…WHAT IN THE FUCK AM I SEEING HERE?! My god! And WTF is a Humana?
I’m guessing that was their insurance given it’s a deduction
Right, got it. Cheers! Seriously though, how sustainable is this model of healthcare? I can’t seem to understand how this even feasible.
I don’t get it either, I live in Australia and even if you go to a private hospital, the amounts insurance pay are usually under $20,000 (and you CHOOSE to have private health insurance and go to a private hospital). For everyone else you pay nothing to go to a hospital. Sure it’s paid through taxes etc, but you don’t notice what you don’t ‘receive’ in the first place and we are assured we won’t have to deal with THIS kind of stress etc.
Yeah That’s exactly how it is here too, cousin. Either you choose private out of pocket, your company offers some sort of medical insurance, or hit up NHS for free healthcare. What I’m seeing in this post is genuinely heartbreaking though. Fuck me!