How Much Does it Cost to Have a Baby?
This is some information I had a hard time finding before the kid was born. Now that I have a six-month-old kid, I almost have an answer. I’ve been looking at medical bills and insurance plans, so I’ve been sorting through this information. Now I’ll share it with you. There’s about a 5% chance that I’ll still get another bill for this, due to the craziness of hospital billing.
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Clarification (2/4/12): The costs discussed below are NOT what we had to pay, they are the what had to be paid by us OR our insurer. Of the charges below, we had (and you would probably need) to pay (1) the deductible for me, (2) the deductible for the baby, (3) our 20% coinsurance up to our out-of-pocket max for each of us. We had good insurance, so these amounts were much lower than the billed amounts below. The totals included below are so you could check with your insurance policy to see what you would have to pay, since deductibles, coinsurance percents, and out-of-pocket maxima vary greatly by insurance policy. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions about this!
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Here are a few basics of what these costs involve:
- Most prenatal care is included
- Newborn care in the hospital
- OB charges
- Lab charges
- A delivery in a regional hospital, including a stay from Monday morning (delivery late morning) through Wednesday afternoon
- An epidural
- A minor complication during delivery and the 2 units of blood I received as a result, with associated tests
- Something, I think pretty minor, that was done due to fluid in the kid’s lungs after delivery. I was busy with the above complications, so I’m not sure exactly what was done in the nursery.
Since insurance policies vary greatly, I’m not including the breakdown of what we paid and what insurance covered. Check your own policy for deductibles and out-of-pocket maxima.
Total billed: $26,223.00
If we didn’t have insurance, that’s the amount we’d be looking at paying. We’d probably be able to bargain some of it, but our insurance did some of that for us.
Total after insurance discounts: $18,017.55
My insurance company decided that some of the bill from the hospital shouldn’t have been charged, so they didn’t cover it, and it passed through untouched to my bill. I’ve been making periodic calls to figure out who is responsible for that money. Thus, $2771.43 of the above totals should perhaps have been not billed, or somehow reduced by the insurance. So far, some really nice people at the insurance company and the hospital have managed to lay the blame on a third party (my doctors) and a fourth party (the company who actually sorts out the insurance charges). For now, I’ll leave the amount in the totals, even though I shouldn’t have to pay it in the end.
Here’s the most useful breakdown of charges I can give. There were varying levels of itemization on the bills, so some items are more specific than others. The breakdown of mother/baby charges should help you figure how this applies to your deductible and such. The below number are the charges after the insurance discount.
Mother: $15,804.84
$1976.25 Epidural
$10,248.92 In-patient hospital charges (this is the charge that includes the disputed $2771.43)
$453.00 Rhogam testing and injection
$2,139.84 OB office charge including prenatal checkups and delivery
$622.35 Various tests, including ultrasounds, at OB office
$364.48 Lab tests and such
Baby: $2,212.71
$1,941.79 Hospital charges
$270.92 Pediatrician charges
Have a question? Leave a comment below and I’ll do my best.
