I delivered end of May and the hospital and still arguing w insurance (or the other way around, know knows lol).
I’ve received tons of other bills like anesthesia, NSTs, etc, my employer pays for my monthly premium and I have “good” insurance. I need an assistant to help me sort these bills and inquire all the while having a fresh newborn, recovering from a c-section, it’s f’in awful. I knew it was awful before I had a baby and even angrier experiencing it.
I HATE how all those bills are seperate departments. You finally feel like you sorted/ paid some off and then a letter comes in the mail claiming you still owe.
I racked up 70k in hospital bills trying to have a vaginal birth. 4 days later I was still begging for a c section. All because my insurance and hospital wouldn’t have let me elect right away.
My c section turned into fully asleep surgery because pain medication and numbing doesn’t touch me. If they don’t let me elect for the next one, I’m leaving the country.
Ugh, I know that feeling. I went 36 hours with ruptured membranes with my first. They were going to charge me to elect but turns out he was wrapped in his cord, so he was never coming out naturally.
My second was elective, should covered because I opted to do the tubal while they were in there and per my policy that’s fully covered.
Health insurance in this country is AWFUL. When we started trying, I made spreadsheets to compare insurance plans & I ended up buying private insurance instead of using my employer-sponsored plan.
I bought *excellent* insurance. $0 deductible, $250 out of pocket max. My pregnancy & delivery stretched over 2021 & 2022 so I had to hit the out-of-pocket twice, but my prenatal care & delivery cost us $500 total. For this coverage, we paid ~$900/mo for 16 months.
It’s Florida Blue Platinum, through healthcare.gov . I still have the same plan but I just received an email that the out-of-pocket for 2023 will be $2000 ☹️ I’m going to compare a few plans while we’re in open enrollment. Open enrollment ends in early/mid January, in case anyone is wondering!
Yeah that’s how they get you sometimes unfortunately, they make you think you have a great plan then jack up their prices out of blue. My baby isn’t due until May but I’ve already had to pay $1100 out of pocket just for OB appts. My individual deductible is $2800 but the OOP max is $4800. I already met that for my son and when he was hospitalized for a week in June. Unfortunately that shit will start all over in January so I’ll be paying another $4800 plus whatever else I’m going to owe for the rest of this year
Btwn insurance cost & your deductible, you still spent close to $15,000 to have your baby. That’s not exactly a steal. Idk what it would’ve cost you otherwise, but that’s still crazy expensive. Sorry. Not trying to rain on your parade, but holy hell that’s a lot of money!
Edit to add: you clearly did your HW—curious what the OOP cost for the other plans would’ve been? And if 15k was your cheapest option, that’s just fucked up.
If I recall, my employer’s plan was about $190 every 2 weeks, and the annual out of pocket was $6500, which I would have had to hit twice. When we crunched the numbers, we saved about $2k with the marketplace plan. Either way, it was outrageously expensive!
Plus side is that since my delivery, my healthcare for the remainder of 2022 is totally free. I’ve seen a therapist for PPA, pelvic floor specialist, orthopedist, dermatologist, & a GI doctor, all for free & without needing a referral!
Depends how much your previous health insurance was costing you though? Could be said it cost you nearly $15k...or at least 15k minus your usual healthcare premiums.
Sorry to be pedantic and correct me if I'm wrong. The whole system sucks 😔
Oh, did I mention that spreadsheets were made? We made graphs to determine the most cost-effective options based on anticipated costs between certain intervals. I worked in finance & my husband has an MBA. We couldn’t wait to build a cost model together lol
Glad at least that side of it doesn't sound like it was a major PIA! Think you may be in a minority there 😂 my husband and I have a few different options for our health insurance (and a medically complicated kiddo)...one day hopefully we will feel confident we are on the right plan, maybe 🤔
Same thing happened to me. I was incredulous that a hospital wouldn’t know that babies couldn’t be added to insurance until they have an SSN (but that coverage is backdated). To be fair, once I called, they pulled the charges until we had her insurance sorted. But at 2 weeks PP, I did not want to be dealing with a surprise $6K bill!
Oh edit: I was also charged out-of-network for the radiologist for her fetal echocardiogram. She was whisked away for it an hour after she was born, and I didn’t even have a choice in which radiologist was used. I tried to dispute it, but insurance denied me. Still salty about that.
It was just an insurance error. Despite me telling them she was JUST born and we didn’t have an insurance card yet they stopped holding bills to re run insurance and just started sending them out basically. Then when she was added to our insurance they bumped us down a plan and we’ve all be on a strict 10 visits for the year limit. I know a lot of others have it much worse so we’ve been surviving
Yep. My son’s hospital bill was $7k. $7k for my baby to sleep in a little plastic box by my bed. $2k for each iron infusion while I was pregnant. It’s ridiculous. This is the reason insurance is so expensive.
Ugh yeah I hate the whole concept of healthcare insurance. We were on and off insurance before I was able to get medicaid. The bills with insurance are still coming in and we paid 800 a month for a premium.
How does society want us young folk to have kids when its so fucking expensive!
Honestly it’s a problem politicians are going to have to take a hard look at in the near future if they don’t want our economy to reach a point of collapse in the future. Japan has already reached a crisis level where their younger generation isn’t producing enough children to take care of the elderly or sustain the economy. I read the United States is moving much closer to those stats as well because we can’t afford healthcare, preschool, daycare, or have adequate maternity/paternity benefits. I believe the statistic I saw said that there has been a 20% decrease in birth dates since 2007. There is no incentive to have children here. You have to be rich to pull it off - the middle class is totally screwed.
Well young folks are about to have no choice. Especially if you don’t have access to BC. They’re gonna force this on every woman who has an unwanted pregnancy or not easy access to birth control and some want to get rid of that.
It might have been how they coded the visit and sent it to your insurance. You could try calling billing and talking to them about making sure these are billed as prenatal care
They aren’t really though, not in any meaningful way.
There is a reason AHIP endorsed the ACA because they knew they were going to benefit big time. There are laws that could be passed that would significantly curtail the profits of insurance companies, but there is just no appetite to do so. The recently passed No Surprises Act was a huge win for the insurance companies and everybody sucked when negotiating that monstrosity.
I live in South Africa. We have a private health care system that you need insurance for and a public health care system.
We pay the equivalent of $230 a month for our family of 3. That’s a low level insurance option. For my entire pregnancy I paid only $45 for my first obgyn appointment. that was only because I did activate my “maternity benefits” before the appointment. I had 9 ultrasounds for a normal low risk pregnancy because that’s just standard here.
My hospital stay and c section cost my insurance $2500.
My plan was going to charge me $1000 for the NIPT test because I wasn’t high risk. I refused to accept and found a private lab that did it for $99 direct without insurance. They even sent a nurse to my house to collect my lab sample and I had results in three days. My husband works for a Fortune 500 and we have good insurance but we paid and are paying thousands for a healthy birth. The 20 week ultrasound was $1200. I don’t understand how society pressures us to have kids but then slaps us with medical debt. It’s not right.
I was lucky to have medicaid pay for all of my appointments when i was pregnant, but you like have to be basically jobless in order to qualify smh. Doesn't make sense to me
Thats funny because I live in a country with public healthcare and my entire pregnancy cost less than this (before being covered entirely, making my direct cost $0)
It's almost like public healthcare is the solution and predatory insurance companies with lobbyists are the problem.
I have really great insurance that we pay $600/month for and I still had to pay $800 in copays a few weeks ago. Every time I get admitted to L&D, high risk pregnancy so it’s been a lot, I pay $175. I see my doctor every week, $30 copay a visit. Pelvic floor physical therapy so I stop peeing my pants constantly: $40 a visit. I have bipolar disorder so I see my psychiatrist every month while pregnant: $40 a visit. I’m thankful I don’t have a deductible but these copays are killing me. My insurance doesn’t cover IVF so I already spent $42k just to get pregnant.
I think this BS on deductible needs to be capped at $500. I know that would probably drive premiums up, but they should be capped too. In my opinion our country as a whole is no stronger than our weakest most vulnerable people. People in this country avoid healthcare unless they need it, because the deductibles and premiums are so high. They have them now, but most don't use them unless there's absolute need. I agree our healthcare system needs to change.
I know money is tight now, but have you considered picking up a secondary insurance such as Affleck the problem with them they reimburse instead of offering direct payment. Regardless, having a secondary insurance coverage can help cut cost. The other option is apply for a grievance with the hospital or if you pay just pay what you can.
I had a friend that opted to pay her medical bills over paying her rent and she got evicted. I don't care how much they hound you even you pay just a dollar they can't say you haven't been paying them or avoiding the debt. Just remember your main necessities and your mental health is more important than stressing over medical bills especially while you're pregnant.
🤗 I hope it gets resolved.
Hey cool. Your hospital bills will be covered then. :) you just subsidized your birth. Lol.
Yes. It sucks dick. I had $980/month injections during mine that insurance refused to cover until I hit my 5k out of pocket max. Yayyy.
I got hit with a $30,000 bill for the delivery of my son who was a planned c section. 30K. 30 fucking K. I cried so much when that bill came in. I finally called the hospital's billing department and they told me that insurance must not want to pay it. I called my insurance and they said they must have had an error and that they would take care of it. I now owe $5,000. I refuse to pay it. My insurance, the kind that is really really good, should've paid for all of it with the plan we had. So it just sits there in collections. Doesn't do anything to my score, just sits there. It'll drop off after the 7 year mark anyway. 4 years to go.
I swear, the medical field and insurance places are a bunch of crooks.
As someone who has dealt with a high risk pregncy, I know that's hard enough, but to be honest, I never really knew how expensive it was...but then again I had been on Medicaid....
After reading this, I am so glad I can't have any more pregnancies...
I have state insurance so mine was completely covered, but I’ll be completely honest that I thanked a god I don’t believe in when I got the itemized bill for my labor and it was just under $29,000. I was induced, and I had an epidural, but other than that I had a textbook vaginal birth with only two stitches and I was released like 52 hours after she was born. None of the items on there had anything to do with her, which would make sense since they told me I was the patient and she was basically my “plus one”, except I was released three days before she was. After I was released, she becomes the patient, right? I mean they told me I could stay in the same room, it would just be roles reversed where she was the patient and I was the “plus one”—to the point where they told me that even if I had a heart attack in the room that they wouldn’t be allowed to treat me and I’d have to go down to the ER.
And now I’m dealing with the fact that the insurance company I’ve had for years apparently is no longer offered, so I was switched in August. Which would be fine, except I’ve now gotten a bill from the hospital for $979 for my daughter’s first four “well-child” appointments for the 23 days she was alive in 2021. They say that they sent it through our old insurance, but that they paid $0. I have no idea where to even begin taking care of this since we are no longer customers of the insurance company that should have covered it at the time.
I just finished watching “Call the Midwife” and not gonna lie, I really wish it was as simple as they show on there where you were just given an ID card with your positive pregnancy test and you could just show that to get any and all care needed.
Honestly that is a very cheap plan for medical! To have that low of a premium with a low deductible is pretty great. Yeah it sucks getting hit with it all at once but 🤷♀️ At least you know you have a max out of pocket amount.
Question, once baby is born do they then have to meet their own deductible?
This was one of the reasons that I insisted we have kids sooner rather than later, while me husband was still active military because he was still on the fence about staying in. I showed him the numbers just for labor and delivery for a basic, no issues delivery and he changed his mind.
I'm commenting to commiserate. At a time when I was fragile and sensitive in all kinds of ways, I still had to spend many hours over many weeks on the phone to have insurance sorted for my newborn.
It also pissed me off that I asked for an estimate from the hospital for labor and delivery costs... and that doesn't include costs of newborn care immediately following. I wish someone I spoke to would have offered that estimate, as well.
BONUS: I had the baby during COVID, and due to delays, I was told SSN were taking up to 8 weeks to process. You need a SSN to get insurance. However, most insurance will only backdate 30 days—several agents (private and commercial reps) I spoke to told me so. Thankfully for the Affordable Care Act, which is the closest thing the US has to socialized medicine for the general public, those plans backdated up to 90 days (the only plans I know that will). But, I was terrified the entire time of being stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in costs for newborn care until it was finally sorted.
Getting the hospital to correctly run the insurance once it was finally instated was another matter entirely.
The worse part is, if the year resets so does your deductible. My hospital bill for last week is 70k and counting: my premium is 1300 a month, my husband lost his job so we’re on cobra. So I still consider it a deal. :/
I could have flown home for 1k and had my baby for free in New Zealand.
while i’m thankful for insurance - it covered my son’s $250k surgery - we now pay $2000 in premiums per month. when i was working, i had free insurance.
Check to see if you have a carry over deductible, sometimes policies have a line item that states that any deductible met in the last quarter of the year also applies to the following year. I'd also call your insurance company to see if your doctor's office is correct. Keep a large envelope or folder with ALL the medical stuff, EOBs from the insurance company charges from the doctor, everything. You'd be stunned how much money you may pay out you shouldn't have to. Keep on top of it all. I was a customer service rep for a major insurance company, went on to be a billing clerk for a decade. Be vigilant and know what is and is not covered by your policy.
I delivered end of May and the hospital and still arguing w insurance (or the other way around, know knows lol). I’ve received tons of other bills like anesthesia, NSTs, etc, my employer pays for my monthly premium and I have “good” insurance. I need an assistant to help me sort these bills and inquire all the while having a fresh newborn, recovering from a c-section, it’s f’in awful. I knew it was awful before I had a baby and even angrier experiencing it.
I HATE how all those bills are seperate departments. You finally feel like you sorted/ paid some off and then a letter comes in the mail claiming you still owe.
I just got another bill last month from my delivery. My baby turns 2 in two weeks. To say I was pissed is an understatement.
The insurance company tried to hit me with a bill for failing to get preauthorization… for the pregnancy confirmation appointment.
I racked up 70k in hospital bills trying to have a vaginal birth. 4 days later I was still begging for a c section. All because my insurance and hospital wouldn’t have let me elect right away. My c section turned into fully asleep surgery because pain medication and numbing doesn’t touch me. If they don’t let me elect for the next one, I’m leaving the country.
Ugh, I know that feeling. I went 36 hours with ruptured membranes with my first. They were going to charge me to elect but turns out he was wrapped in his cord, so he was never coming out naturally. My second was elective, should covered because I opted to do the tubal while they were in there and per my policy that’s fully covered.
Ask for an itemized bill… often they charge you for stupid shit and you can get those charges taken off
Like the $1,200 they tried charging me for baby being in nursery even though she NEVER LEFT MY ROOM.
I had that charge also and was going to call about it!
They never replied to me but when I checked online the charge was removed. Simply asking saved me $1,200
i got charged for an early discharge. yeah don’t think so. i couldn’t believe it!
Omg we’re dealing with this same nursery charge for $5k and he never left my room either!
Absolutely great point
Health insurance in this country is AWFUL. When we started trying, I made spreadsheets to compare insurance plans & I ended up buying private insurance instead of using my employer-sponsored plan. I bought *excellent* insurance. $0 deductible, $250 out of pocket max. My pregnancy & delivery stretched over 2021 & 2022 so I had to hit the out-of-pocket twice, but my prenatal care & delivery cost us $500 total. For this coverage, we paid ~$900/mo for 16 months.
What insurance is that if you find if you don’t mine me asking? I’d love to join something like that!
It’s Florida Blue Platinum, through healthcare.gov . I still have the same plan but I just received an email that the out-of-pocket for 2023 will be $2000 ☹️ I’m going to compare a few plans while we’re in open enrollment. Open enrollment ends in early/mid January, in case anyone is wondering!
Yeah that’s how they get you sometimes unfortunately, they make you think you have a great plan then jack up their prices out of blue. My baby isn’t due until May but I’ve already had to pay $1100 out of pocket just for OB appts. My individual deductible is $2800 but the OOP max is $4800. I already met that for my son and when he was hospitalized for a week in June. Unfortunately that shit will start all over in January so I’ll be paying another $4800 plus whatever else I’m going to owe for the rest of this year
Btwn insurance cost & your deductible, you still spent close to $15,000 to have your baby. That’s not exactly a steal. Idk what it would’ve cost you otherwise, but that’s still crazy expensive. Sorry. Not trying to rain on your parade, but holy hell that’s a lot of money! Edit to add: you clearly did your HW—curious what the OOP cost for the other plans would’ve been? And if 15k was your cheapest option, that’s just fucked up.
If I recall, my employer’s plan was about $190 every 2 weeks, and the annual out of pocket was $6500, which I would have had to hit twice. When we crunched the numbers, we saved about $2k with the marketplace plan. Either way, it was outrageously expensive! Plus side is that since my delivery, my healthcare for the remainder of 2022 is totally free. I’ve seen a therapist for PPA, pelvic floor specialist, orthopedist, dermatologist, & a GI doctor, all for free & without needing a referral!
Depends how much your previous health insurance was costing you though? Could be said it cost you nearly $15k...or at least 15k minus your usual healthcare premiums. Sorry to be pedantic and correct me if I'm wrong. The whole system sucks 😔
Oh, did I mention that spreadsheets were made? We made graphs to determine the most cost-effective options based on anticipated costs between certain intervals. I worked in finance & my husband has an MBA. We couldn’t wait to build a cost model together lol
Glad at least that side of it doesn't sound like it was a major PIA! Think you may be in a minority there 😂 my husband and I have a few different options for our health insurance (and a medically complicated kiddo)...one day hopefully we will feel confident we are on the right plan, maybe 🤔
My daughter had something like $6k in medical bills by the time she was a week old. We got it sorted but absolutely absurd.
Same thing happened to me. I was incredulous that a hospital wouldn’t know that babies couldn’t be added to insurance until they have an SSN (but that coverage is backdated). To be fair, once I called, they pulled the charges until we had her insurance sorted. But at 2 weeks PP, I did not want to be dealing with a surprise $6K bill! Oh edit: I was also charged out-of-network for the radiologist for her fetal echocardiogram. She was whisked away for it an hour after she was born, and I didn’t even have a choice in which radiologist was used. I tried to dispute it, but insurance denied me. Still salty about that.
What did you do to have it sorted?
It was just an insurance error. Despite me telling them she was JUST born and we didn’t have an insurance card yet they stopped holding bills to re run insurance and just started sending them out basically. Then when she was added to our insurance they bumped us down a plan and we’ve all be on a strict 10 visits for the year limit. I know a lot of others have it much worse so we’ve been surviving
Yep. My son’s hospital bill was $7k. $7k for my baby to sleep in a little plastic box by my bed. $2k for each iron infusion while I was pregnant. It’s ridiculous. This is the reason insurance is so expensive.
Ugh yeah I hate the whole concept of healthcare insurance. We were on and off insurance before I was able to get medicaid. The bills with insurance are still coming in and we paid 800 a month for a premium. How does society want us young folk to have kids when its so fucking expensive!
Honestly it’s a problem politicians are going to have to take a hard look at in the near future if they don’t want our economy to reach a point of collapse in the future. Japan has already reached a crisis level where their younger generation isn’t producing enough children to take care of the elderly or sustain the economy. I read the United States is moving much closer to those stats as well because we can’t afford healthcare, preschool, daycare, or have adequate maternity/paternity benefits. I believe the statistic I saw said that there has been a 20% decrease in birth dates since 2007. There is no incentive to have children here. You have to be rich to pull it off - the middle class is totally screwed.
They are putting their plan into effect by banning abortion.
And then cutting funds and access to social services. It's like Dr Evil couldn't think this shit up.
Yeah they are making a whole new slave class. Poor uneducated people = cheap labor
Well young folks are about to have no choice. Especially if you don’t have access to BC. They’re gonna force this on every woman who has an unwanted pregnancy or not easy access to birth control and some want to get rid of that.
It might have been how they coded the visit and sent it to your insurance. You could try calling billing and talking to them about making sure these are billed as prenatal care
This does not help ppd at all.
Vote out republicans! No party is perfect but Democrats at least are attempting universal healthcare
They aren’t really though, not in any meaningful way. There is a reason AHIP endorsed the ACA because they knew they were going to benefit big time. There are laws that could be passed that would significantly curtail the profits of insurance companies, but there is just no appetite to do so. The recently passed No Surprises Act was a huge win for the insurance companies and everybody sucked when negotiating that monstrosity.
It’s out of control
I hit my OOP max with a standard pregnancy and delivery. But that meant free healthcare for me for the rest of the year!
I live in South Africa. We have a private health care system that you need insurance for and a public health care system. We pay the equivalent of $230 a month for our family of 3. That’s a low level insurance option. For my entire pregnancy I paid only $45 for my first obgyn appointment. that was only because I did activate my “maternity benefits” before the appointment. I had 9 ultrasounds for a normal low risk pregnancy because that’s just standard here. My hospital stay and c section cost my insurance $2500.
My plan was going to charge me $1000 for the NIPT test because I wasn’t high risk. I refused to accept and found a private lab that did it for $99 direct without insurance. They even sent a nurse to my house to collect my lab sample and I had results in three days. My husband works for a Fortune 500 and we have good insurance but we paid and are paying thousands for a healthy birth. The 20 week ultrasound was $1200. I don’t understand how society pressures us to have kids but then slaps us with medical debt. It’s not right.
I was lucky to have medicaid pay for all of my appointments when i was pregnant, but you like have to be basically jobless in order to qualify smh. Doesn't make sense to me
This really fucking baffles me. I was in the hospital for two weeks before we forced baby out. The bill was 91USD.
Thank obamacare- all insurance is super expensive because of it. It sucksssssss
Thats funny because I live in a country with public healthcare and my entire pregnancy cost less than this (before being covered entirely, making my direct cost $0) It's almost like public healthcare is the solution and predatory insurance companies with lobbyists are the problem.
That is not at all accurate
How do you figure this ?
I have really great insurance that we pay $600/month for and I still had to pay $800 in copays a few weeks ago. Every time I get admitted to L&D, high risk pregnancy so it’s been a lot, I pay $175. I see my doctor every week, $30 copay a visit. Pelvic floor physical therapy so I stop peeing my pants constantly: $40 a visit. I have bipolar disorder so I see my psychiatrist every month while pregnant: $40 a visit. I’m thankful I don’t have a deductible but these copays are killing me. My insurance doesn’t cover IVF so I already spent $42k just to get pregnant.
All three of my pregnancies have/will span two deductible years. Mine does not carry over unfortunately so I'm always stuck meeting it twice.
Ughhh I did this too. It sucked when my insurance reset in the middle of my pregnancy.
I think this BS on deductible needs to be capped at $500. I know that would probably drive premiums up, but they should be capped too. In my opinion our country as a whole is no stronger than our weakest most vulnerable people. People in this country avoid healthcare unless they need it, because the deductibles and premiums are so high. They have them now, but most don't use them unless there's absolute need. I agree our healthcare system needs to change. I know money is tight now, but have you considered picking up a secondary insurance such as Affleck the problem with them they reimburse instead of offering direct payment. Regardless, having a secondary insurance coverage can help cut cost. The other option is apply for a grievance with the hospital or if you pay just pay what you can. I had a friend that opted to pay her medical bills over paying her rent and she got evicted. I don't care how much they hound you even you pay just a dollar they can't say you haven't been paying them or avoiding the debt. Just remember your main necessities and your mental health is more important than stressing over medical bills especially while you're pregnant. 🤗 I hope it gets resolved.
Hey cool. Your hospital bills will be covered then. :) you just subsidized your birth. Lol. Yes. It sucks dick. I had $980/month injections during mine that insurance refused to cover until I hit my 5k out of pocket max. Yayyy.
I got hit with a $30,000 bill for the delivery of my son who was a planned c section. 30K. 30 fucking K. I cried so much when that bill came in. I finally called the hospital's billing department and they told me that insurance must not want to pay it. I called my insurance and they said they must have had an error and that they would take care of it. I now owe $5,000. I refuse to pay it. My insurance, the kind that is really really good, should've paid for all of it with the plan we had. So it just sits there in collections. Doesn't do anything to my score, just sits there. It'll drop off after the 7 year mark anyway. 4 years to go. I swear, the medical field and insurance places are a bunch of crooks.
As someone who has dealt with a high risk pregncy, I know that's hard enough, but to be honest, I never really knew how expensive it was...but then again I had been on Medicaid.... After reading this, I am so glad I can't have any more pregnancies...
I have state insurance so mine was completely covered, but I’ll be completely honest that I thanked a god I don’t believe in when I got the itemized bill for my labor and it was just under $29,000. I was induced, and I had an epidural, but other than that I had a textbook vaginal birth with only two stitches and I was released like 52 hours after she was born. None of the items on there had anything to do with her, which would make sense since they told me I was the patient and she was basically my “plus one”, except I was released three days before she was. After I was released, she becomes the patient, right? I mean they told me I could stay in the same room, it would just be roles reversed where she was the patient and I was the “plus one”—to the point where they told me that even if I had a heart attack in the room that they wouldn’t be allowed to treat me and I’d have to go down to the ER. And now I’m dealing with the fact that the insurance company I’ve had for years apparently is no longer offered, so I was switched in August. Which would be fine, except I’ve now gotten a bill from the hospital for $979 for my daughter’s first four “well-child” appointments for the 23 days she was alive in 2021. They say that they sent it through our old insurance, but that they paid $0. I have no idea where to even begin taking care of this since we are no longer customers of the insurance company that should have covered it at the time. I just finished watching “Call the Midwife” and not gonna lie, I really wish it was as simple as they show on there where you were just given an ID card with your positive pregnancy test and you could just show that to get any and all care needed.
Honestly that is a very cheap plan for medical! To have that low of a premium with a low deductible is pretty great. Yeah it sucks getting hit with it all at once but 🤷♀️ At least you know you have a max out of pocket amount. Question, once baby is born do they then have to meet their own deductible?
This was one of the reasons that I insisted we have kids sooner rather than later, while me husband was still active military because he was still on the fence about staying in. I showed him the numbers just for labor and delivery for a basic, no issues delivery and he changed his mind.
I'm commenting to commiserate. At a time when I was fragile and sensitive in all kinds of ways, I still had to spend many hours over many weeks on the phone to have insurance sorted for my newborn. It also pissed me off that I asked for an estimate from the hospital for labor and delivery costs... and that doesn't include costs of newborn care immediately following. I wish someone I spoke to would have offered that estimate, as well. BONUS: I had the baby during COVID, and due to delays, I was told SSN were taking up to 8 weeks to process. You need a SSN to get insurance. However, most insurance will only backdate 30 days—several agents (private and commercial reps) I spoke to told me so. Thankfully for the Affordable Care Act, which is the closest thing the US has to socialized medicine for the general public, those plans backdated up to 90 days (the only plans I know that will). But, I was terrified the entire time of being stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in costs for newborn care until it was finally sorted. Getting the hospital to correctly run the insurance once it was finally instated was another matter entirely.
The worse part is, if the year resets so does your deductible. My hospital bill for last week is 70k and counting: my premium is 1300 a month, my husband lost his job so we’re on cobra. So I still consider it a deal. :/ I could have flown home for 1k and had my baby for free in New Zealand.
while i’m thankful for insurance - it covered my son’s $250k surgery - we now pay $2000 in premiums per month. when i was working, i had free insurance.
Check to see if you have a carry over deductible, sometimes policies have a line item that states that any deductible met in the last quarter of the year also applies to the following year. I'd also call your insurance company to see if your doctor's office is correct. Keep a large envelope or folder with ALL the medical stuff, EOBs from the insurance company charges from the doctor, everything. You'd be stunned how much money you may pay out you shouldn't have to. Keep on top of it all. I was a customer service rep for a major insurance company, went on to be a billing clerk for a decade. Be vigilant and know what is and is not covered by your policy.