Cost of having a baby

[RZehr]

How much is the going rate now on your area? Hospital, Doctor, Epidural.

[ohio jones]

Just over $8k, COD.

[RZehr]

Hospital gave me an estimate of $11,000 for 48hr stay. Not including medicine, tests, doctor, or anesthesiologist. These are all billed separately.
The anesthesiologist cost for an epidural is $500 per hour, and which is $6,000 if you have 12 hours.
Not sure yet what the doctor rate is.

These are self pay prices.

[steve-in-kville]

Mid-wives at home range between $750 and $1200. More if in a clinic with an aid.

Local hospital.... don't remember as I had good insurance then. The twins would have cost us a year's wages if it wouldn't have been for the insurance.

[temporal1]

i cannot resist.
whenever the cost of hospital childbirth come up, i have a mental flashback.
maybe as a young teen, my mother showed me a receipt from the local hospital, for one of the six of us .. it was a whopping $200. .. (it may have been, $201.57, or so) ..

this was a significant number then. my parents were proud, and relieved, they were able to pay such a sum. no min wage in those days!

but, wait! there’s more.
for this sum, for a healthy, normal delivery, my mother spent 2 WEEKS “in confinement,” in the hospital, i suppose they would say. mothers were given tremendous support, especially help with establishing breast feeding. she felt this was a great value to women and their newborns.

as i got older, i realized, for my mother, this was probably the closest thing she ever experienced to having a vacation. she was fed, no laundry, no caring for others in the middle of the night, etc.
my mother was a happy “patient!” her ordinary life was a life of work, being hospitalized was a sort of luxury, she appreciated it. she loved her nurses, and they loved her.

today, mothers are often home with new babies within 24 hours! my mother did not like this!
i did. i couldn’t wait to get home with our new little ones! but, i definitely appreciate her POV.

i’m glad she told me about how things were. if she had not, i’m not sure i could believe it.

the sums of money people talk about today, on all aspects of life, are hard for me to grasp.
i still believe an annual family income of $20,000 should be “pretty good.”

[Judas Maccabeus]

Hospital gave me an estimate of $11,000 for 48hr stay. Not including medicine, tests, doctor, or anesthesiologist. These are all billed separately.
The anesthesiologist cost for an epidural is $500 per hour, and which is $6,000 if you have 12 hours.
Not sure yet what the doctor rate is.

These are self pay prices.

These look like charge master prices. If you are not in urgent need, ask what discounts they have, partial prepayment is commonly one. If there is a co-op in your area, see if they have a negotiated agreement.

I don’t know what the situation is in Oregon, but the Old Order Amish co-op saves people a fortune.

J.M.

[mike]

Hospital gave me an estimate of $11,000 for 48hr stay. Not including medicine, tests, doctor, or anesthesiologist. These are all billed separately.
The anesthesiologist cost for an epidural is $500 per hour, and which is $6,000 if you have 12 hours.
Not sure yet what the doctor rate is.

These are self pay prices.

These look like charge master prices. If you are not in urgent need, ask what discounts they have, partial prepayment is commonly one. If there is a co-op in your area, see if they have a negotiated agreement.

I don’t know what the situation is in Oregon, but the Old Order Amish co-op saves people a fortune.

J.M.

We typically use a midwife, but ended up in the hospital about six years ago. 24 hour stay with no epidural was I think around $8K. We are members of a Mennonite co-op that has a pricing arrangement with the health system.

[electro-wiz]

Our first child using our local hospital and their midwife for prenatal care, was around $10,000.

With our second child we decided to go with a midwife that served the Mennonites, and do a home birth. I believe that was supposed to be around $3000. However our son had different ideas and ended up coming 12 weeks early, and thus was born at the hospital. His entire stay of 71 days ended up being over $600,000, thankfully they were able to offer us a large discount, and we only ended up with a bill for $160,000

[Josh]

Goodness. In Australia having a baby is free.

[ohio jones]

Goodness. In Australia having a baby is free.

Let's take the case of a person earning $40k US per year.
In the US, that person would pay federal income tax of $3170 US, plus 12% of each additional US$, if single; less if married.
In Australia, that person would pay income tax of $7005 US, plus 23% of each additional US$. The numbers will change slightly depending on the exchange rate.

If you have a baby every other year, it comes out about the same. Otherwise the Australians are paying a lot more for their free babies.

Or for something. Yes, I'm sure that's oversimplified.