Baby Delivery Cost - Buyer Experiences and Price Information

Not a cent; go Canada!

We were shocked at both HOW MUCH we had to pay out of pocket after insurance, and by HOW MANY people send you a separate bill. all these are after insurance:
Obstetrician - $1428.70
Prenatal Vitamins - $360
Hospital bill for Mother - $1,067.50
Anesthesia bill (separate from hospital bill, charged by both though, ughhh) - $429
Hospital bill for baby - $1,833.57
Pediatrician for checking and discharging baby - $394
Separate bill from Hearing testing company - $150


after looking at that list of people who stick their grubby hands in your wallet, you'd think our baby had complications or required special care. Couldnt be further from the truth. We had an excellent labor. Baby was going on 9 days past due date, so we went in for a scheduled delivery/induction. OB broke bag of waters, labor progressed naturally from there. 12 hour labor w/ Stadol, then an epidural. Baby was completely healthy, required zero additional care. We stayed for only two nights too.

Flat fee is $150, regardless of complications or type of delivery. Insurance covers everything at 100% with no deductible or co-insurance. Costs me $65/paycheck (every other week). Totally worth it!

We are still getting bills after 8 weeks but it is already > 40k. We had to meet the out of pocket maximum of 3k for mom, and then again for baby. The only nice thing was we didnt have to reach the deductible first for the baby, but we easily would have with his bill over 17k. This is absolutely outrageous for a fully insured family. Thankfully we have a healthy baby but wtf is up with the expense?

Total amount was 3,400 but my deductible reimbursement and flex spending account worked wonders. =) Had a natural water birth. no complications.

We recently had our 6th home birth. I (daddy) delivered just like the last three. We had great midwives for the first three and they were great about educating us and we felt confident that birth was not a medical emergency that required hospitals, inconvenienced doctors, or ridiculous bills. So yes, for about $3 (cost of an umbilical clamp) our birth experiences are quite affordable. Other misc. expenses-blood pressure cuff, doppler, (to monitor fetal heartbeat) urinalysis strips, iron test kits, circumcision, and immunizations.

Paid $2000 upfront to Midwife, delivered at home which was absolutely the best experience. Insurance reimbursed me 70% of cost for an "out-of-network" provider so total cost was $600. I will do it again when I have more kids. (Delivered December 2010)

room & board 1,790
Pharmacy 870
Surgery supplies 321
Lab 588
Recovery room 1,848
Labor room / deliver 3,639
total = 9,056

We are self-employed and have private medical coverage. After doing some math, we opted not to purchase the optional maternity rider. It worked out fine for us. I estimated that we would have paid about the same with or without maternity coverage. Our insurance is required by law to cover pregnancy complications (which I didn't have - but it would have covered them). Our OB gave us a package price for 13 appointments, basic testing & delivery, and then we had an additional bill from the hospital. We would have paid less if we had group coverage through an employer, but private health coverage is just crazy expensive! I just found out I'm pregnant again, and we're going the same route.

This was the cost out of pocket for the C-section, physician delivery fee, anesthesia (epidural) fee, healthy baby and hospital fees.

I am 16 wks and just found out that we have zero maternity coverage. Apparently in Texas there are no private health plans that offer maternity coverage. Has anyone else encountered this? We thought we were being diligent and responsible citizens by privately insuring ourselves but now we are just scared at how much having the baby is going to cost us.

with all my deliveries we were in the military so we were very lucky. It only cost us 9.00 per day & that was only to cover the cost of meals. It didnt matter if it was for delivering babies or having any type of surgery like when i had my hysterectomy the bill was 68,000.00! My share - 27.00. Life was great when we were active duty. Now is a different story altogether. Now we have tricare-extra plus united health care neither one of them cooperate with the other so nobody pays the bill then i get charged for them. Its crazy and who knows how much either will charge. Right now i have almost 17,000.00 in past due dr. Bills & hospital bills. @ this rate i wont pay it off til im dead!

We have health insurance through my husband's job and we pay approximately $320.00 a month for it.
Insurance pays 80% AFTER deductable is met, we pay 20% plus copays plus the whole deductable first, up to a yearly out of pocket maximum of $5,000 which they recently bumped up to $6,500.
So the most we will pay in a given year is now $6,500 on top of the $320 per month and on top of deductable and copays.
I had a C. delivery of twins and lots and lots of prenatal care due to twin pregnancy. Really I got 2 for the price of 1 (sorta). It was like a 50% discount on baby #2.

People like to blame insurance companies, and I can see that after all they do try to not pay and expect us to pay them and to pay the providers who insurance is supposed to pay, but these hospitals charge such astronomical rates for these things that it's absolutely unfeasible to say that health care reform starts and stops with insurance. 30,000 for delivering a child makes me want to just stay home with a midwife and deliver. Then charging the infant son with the nursery stay, or charging children with 10's of thousands of dollars in medical bills is wrong. Not everything in this country needs to be capitalistic.

On a $500 deductible + 80/20 plan. Pregnancy will cost me about $3k out of pocket.
I think it is absoultely outrageous...a childbirth should not cost that much even after insurance. I don't have $3k to spend and only have about $30 a month that I can afford to pay.
Honestly, with the amounts that these guys charge, they should be happy getting 80% of a super overinflated bill in the first place.

I am 5 week pregnant and just found out my Golden Rule _united health will pay only 4000 dollars for my delivery, but not any treatment during pregnancy...never get this insurance, I dissappointed. I paid quarterly payment of around 800 dollars for one year 500 dollars whole 3 months and never got benefit of the plan.

I paid 300 a month for my insurance and they only paid out what I paid into the plan. 500 deductible. Not happy about this!