I want to have your baby.

OK, I don't. My wife and I are debatating something.

If you have a kid in America, she says you have to pay $10,000.00 no matter what and if you don't have the cash you'll be billed til it's paid.

I think she's wrong.
Doesn't insurance cover it? What about people on welfare or unemployment?

 

What do you mean "have to pay" ... to who?

If you don't have insurance and you give birth in a hospital you're damn right you'll get billed for it. And we're talking tens (even hundreds) of thousands of dollars.

 

Pay hospital fees. Does insurance cover birth?

 

If you have it.

 

Up here in Canada, we don't get billed per se. We just start paying out stacks of money from birth until, as far as I can tell, about age 45-50 per child, while along the way the various levels of government leach away about 50% plus of our income claiming they are helping us.

Yes, the system sucks but it works. Well, it works for politicians, anyway. Most of them seem to end up pretty rich. Go figure, eh?

 

don't call it a baby, say you're getting rid of a tumor in her belly, it'll cost less.

 

But then they will STAB IT when it comes out.

 

When I was pregnant, I worked as a waitress. Generally, restaurants don't offer insurance, and mine was no exception. I went thru the state for medical reasons only - I was a high risk pregnancy. I could have had the food stamps and wic and the free stuff offered and people usually take, but since I worked and could afford everything but the medical care I didn't take advantage of it.

I've never been billed for anything. I got excellent care before during and after - my son was born with a heart murmur and he underwent testing right after birth. I was also on daily medication during the pregnancy that cost about $1000 per month, and was never charged for that either. Since the medication was a shot, I was also offered a nurse to come to my house twice a day to give me the shot, opted out of that too and learned to do it myself. I had an amniocentisis done - it's required after 35, and for me since I was high risk. I went to the doctor twice a week - at his office and the clinic once a month.

My ob-gyn was also one of the best in this area.

 

My babies cost about $5k each - including a lot of prenatal care. It varies from insurance policy though. I know someone who ended up paying closer to 20K, and another person who payed less than $2K. It also depends on what your standard for care is, what doctor you trust, whether or not your OB is in your insurance network, whether your OB has their own ultrasound machine, if you are a high risk pregnancy versus a low risk pregnancy, etc.

Money was tight after delivery both times, so our bills weren't paid immediately. We didn't get harrassed in the least, they just sent more mail.

Some insurance companies will actually pay you a commission to review the hospital bill and find problems - things like charging $100 for aspirin, charging for procedures not received, etc. because the hospitals like to stick it to the insurance companies and if you have decent insurance the patients don't tend to review the line items very closely.

 

You never realize how damn expensive everything is in life. I mean something as natural as birth, and they slap a price on it...

God damn, we need someone to send teenagers a welcome to adulthood pamphlet or something. No one taught me this crap All I know how to do is calculate the EMF generated by a freaking metal rod flying around in earth's gravitational field

 

Have any revenue? traffic stats for your babies? Is there a BIN?

 

Yeah, okay, but believe me you'll be glad you learned that when you're riding a freaking metal rod in orbit around the earth... have you forgotten what happened to Major Tom already?

And stop typing everywhere... it's not a smiley... it's almost a No Parking sign.

 

I'll use my goddamn as much as I want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Everything comes with a price now-a-days, I'm depressed

 

just tell her to say "i dont understand, no hablo ingles, hablo espanol" and after having the baby, she can leave the hospital saying "Gracias, hasta la vista Doc". Thats the way when i spent a year in LA my latin friends used to tell me they do Half-kidding because u know it is true...

 

When my daughter was born we had great insurance and it was a good thing... she spent 16 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and the bill was close to $200K.... now I doubt my insurance company paid $200K... but I'm sure they paid a decent amount of it.

 

Well, I guess an intensiv Information education campaign will help.