Our beautiful daughter was born on March 16, 2016. Labor was induced because she was 9 days late and her mother and I are older, so the doctor wanted to play it safe. It was a fairly uneventful labor that ultimately ended in a C-section because after 22 hours it hadn’t progressed far enough and, though our daughter wasn’t in any distress, we decided that continuing a process that had stalled without any guarantees that it would change would be the wrong choice. Everything was by the book, the APGAR score was a 9, she latched for breast feeding within 3 hours of birth and there were no complications. We were released from the hospital a day early… And then, the shitty American medical system kicked in.
Because of the shitty implementation of a new Enterprise Resource Management system at my wife’s employer, we were unable until today to add our daughter as dependent. In the meantime, because our daughter was deemed to have no insurance, the hospital billed her, not us for $11,000 worth of medical expenses that were not itemized in any way on the bill. So my darling daughter, for 35 days, you were in debt for $11,000 just for being born. Welcome to America.
Prior to that, however, we started to receive our itemized accounting from our insurance company. The final bills are not in yet [including the cost for my wife’s doctor]. But so far, in addition to the $11,000 of non-itemized costs billed to our 1 month old daughter, the insurance billing from the hospital for us is about $70,000. So, even prior to the bill from my wife’s doctor, it has somehow cost $81,000 to deliver a baby, for a delivery that was pretty straight forward, even with a C-section.
What is the makeup of that $70,000 that we have seen itemized? $17,000 for the ‘nursery’. My daughter didn’t spend a second in the nursery. She was with us the entire time. $11,500 for the C-section. $3,500 for 2 hours in the recovery room. $10,000 for the semi-private hospital room [which we had to abandon because our ‘roommates’ had decided to litigate who ruined who’s life within hours of the birth of their own child, so we ponied up $1,050 out of pocket for a private room]. $1,900 for ‘medication’ which consisted of a handful of motrin and oxycontin that one could buy at a pharmacy without insurance for $10. $900 for a medical device that consisted of a straw with a balloon on the end that was probably made in China for $20. Thousands for IV’s. Etc.
Of course, I’m not shocked by any of this. But my wife is British and grew up with the NHS, so when she sees these types of bills, knowing what it costs for a birth in the UK, she is apoplectic. And WE should be apoplectic too. $81,000, not including the doctor, to deliver a baby. $11,000 of those costs billed to the infant — and what are they? Weighing her 3 times? Administering vitamin K drops and a hep B vaccine? Checking her vitals 4 times a day for 2 and half days? Giving her a hearing test? Because that is all they did specifically related to her after she was born. Christ. I went to an elite east coast college in the early 1990’s and we paid about $80,000 for that. Under what circumstances should it ever cost over $81,000 to deliver a baby?
This is precisely why the American health care system is a disaster — why for profit health care is an abomination. Every piece of the system itself is scratching for profit, using a shareholder model of capitalism to administer a human good. Hospitals are just as much in the real estate market as they are in the health care market — spending on lavish physical plant improvements to improve their marketing and expand their client base so that the CEO’s, upper management, et al. can benefit from their expansion. And don’t get me started on pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, medical device manufacturers and even many medical practitioners. It’s a racket. It’s completely unregulated. It has no basis in reality. And the people who suffer are those who pay — the patients. And they suffer not just in their pocket books, but in their treatment outcomes.
We as Americans spend over 14% of our GDP on medical care — more than double everyone else in western Europe. The results of our medical industry rank us on par with some of the poorest former Soviet satellites in eastern Europe. It’s a disgrace. And while the ACA was certainly a step in the right direction as far as getting people basic access to medical care, it simply never addressed the actual problem in this country.
For profit medicine is the problem in this country. No price controls. No bargaining for prescription drugs. No telling hospitals ‘fuck you, we aren’t paying you $17.000 for a nursery a baby never set foot in’. The only answer is nationalized health care — be it single payer, medicare for all, NHS. This is not sustainable. Everyone knows it’s not sustainable. Despite the protestations of Krugman, et al, even the Democratic establishment knows it’s not sustainable. So it’s about damn time we did something.
I don’t care if you are a Hillary supporter or a Bernie supporter. If you don’t realize that we need some form of nationalized healthcare in order to keep our healthcare system from coming apart at the seems [and to be honest, it already has], you’re a blind fool. No country can consider itself remotely ‘civilized’ and allow the idiocy, inefficiency and injustice of our health care system to continue.