penguinsix

FWIW, our second was a non-complicated 'normal' delivery in a US hospital. The bill was $16,600 of which all but $500 was paid for by insurance (we opted for a private recovery room which was not standard at this slightly older hospital).

Complicated births can be $50,000 easily.

PLEASE validate every aspect of the insurance cover before you come over. There are just too many loopholes and fine print sections you want to make sure don't come back to bite you.

ToffeeUSA

The profit-obsessed/shareholder-feeding US medical system can't hold a candle to the NHS...get ready for a half dozen unnecessary and expensive medical tests every doctor visit, physicians with absolutely no interest in preventive medicine, and learn to accept that you will be paying outrageous sums for medications you obtained for next to nothing in the UK...and check your copays and 'pre-existing condition' clauses and pray the insurance provider doesn't exclude pregnancy treatments/consultation because they are 'pre-existing' ( Only kidding on that last one...I think.

Welcome to the machine.

NYCbound

WOAH!!

To the OP, congratulations

MsElui

Just to offer another point of view - as this last baby was my third child and I have easy short labours - i decided to have a home birth with midwives (quite rare in the US) - and it cost me under $3000, two thirds of which my insurance covered.

kins

My homebirth cost me $0. But then it was in the UK

ToffeeUSA

Ozzidoc

Remember though that the NHS is NOT a free service, just currently free to the user at the point of provision. (It's also almost completely broken, but that's a whole other thread!!)

ToffeeUSA

...can you name one healthcare system that ISN'T completely broken? There is no free healthcare anywhere, of course. However, the NHS deals with pre-existing conditions in a more acceptable manner compared with the insurance-led US healthcare system.

If I develop unusual bumps or moles on my skin, do I (as so many do) wait it out, in case they turn out to be of no consequence, or do I consult my doctor, so he can take a biopsy, declare them benign, only to find that my insurers then amend my policy to exclude skin cancer? The risk of pre-existing exclusion in my case, and I suspect in many other cases, delays my receiving attention for what might be a sign of some potentially fatal illness. I delay it because if I later need the insurers to pay out for life-saving treatment, they will find it harder to deny my claim.

Under the NHS system (I am 54 years old and moved to the US from Britain in 2005), if I had any concern about my health, I would just visit my doctor - I was routinely paying into the system (I made $200k a year in the UK, so was paying a fair whack in NI), so I might as well use it. If I needed more treatment down the road, no-one was going to refuse to pay for it because I had the same type of problem 5 years earlier!

So my issue with the US system is not that the doctors aren't any good (they are no better or more knowledgeable IMHO than UK doctors and screw up royally just as often - although by your screen name I am sure you already know that ). It is that their system is run not for their profit alone, but for the profit of middlemen/women who open and close the treatment gate based on share dividends, rather than on clinical need.

Of course the NHS has an element of financial decision-making, as any organization does, but since it is not required to make a profit, but to provide a service to patients within treasury budgets, it affords a better balance between the needs of the patient and the affordability of care. Furthermore, because the government picks up the cost of remedy, it promotes prevention and takes a greater interest in sources of illness, such as food safety, exercise, dietary behavior and so on. Here in the US, the FDA is the enabling authority for pharmaceutical and big food interests, rather than protector of the populace.

A big accounting firm was on CNN yesterday saying that the cost of US healthcare is set to rise by 9% this year, with a disproportionate amount of that (double digits) to be paid for by premiums paid by workers, with the 'strapped for cash' employers paying a smaller percentage.

Can you explain why healthcare prices will rise by 9%? Are doctors and nurses earning an additional 9%? Or is it simply because, with fewer people able to afford premiums, and many losing their livelihoods entirely, the burden of healthcare is carried on 9% fewer shoulders? The shareholders expect to maintain their dividends or they will remove their investment from the industry - maybe THAT is the reason the US healthcare system is in such a mess?

As I say, show me a system that isn't.

meauxna

Maybe you should start a healthcare thread and let it all out, Toffee, seems pent up!


Didn't anyone notice that the OP of this thread never came back?

ToffeeUSA

Funny how that happens!

Nah, I'm not really pent up Meauxna (neat spelling - is that mona or moaner)? but it bemuses me how people and the drive-by media in the US (with vested interests - look at all the drug ads TV and print carry) knock the NHS down but never come up with anything as good, let alone better. Trust me...I am NO SOCIALIST, but there are some things I think are best run not-for-profit, healthcare being one of them.

America has a sickness culture, not a health culture, perhaps because there's money to be made in treating sickness and none in preventing it.

It's all cool though...best wishes to you...

Jerseygirl

I've a feeling Mo is going to warm to you.

JulieinAustin

The more I think about this; the more I think if I were to be in the same situation I would stay in the UK and have the baby there first unless you have really excellent coverage over here. I've heard so many stories about the hospitals here only thinking about the $$$$ and trying to charge you for medicines and extras you don't really need... Also is it true they charge you for every little thing even down to the bedsheets here?

meauxna

Oh yeah, don't misunderstand, it's a worthy topic and you seem to have a lot to say about it. I thought it deserved its own thread instead of tagging onto thread drift ones like this, where the OP isn't coming back anyway.

<sigh>
And you have to eat stale kittens for breakfast!

JulieinAustin

Do you get billed for those as well?...

meauxna

Only the organic ones.