My wife was in labor for a bit less than a day. Baby was fine, everything good, but apparently we were taking too long. Doctor demanded we do a c-section. When we said we wanted to wait, she walked out, slamming the door. We got scared, they made 60K for about 20 minutes of work. Guess what the c-section rate at that hospital is? 50%. Not kidding. I'm in the wrong business.
A decade or so back medical specialists received a financial bonus each time that were called into a Florida emergency room.
A friend of the family was unexpectedly laid off, with insurance expiring at midnight the same day. She had the first of many grand mal seizures around 3 hours after the insurance expired.
The doctor who was first called in to the ER specialized in one type of cancer. He mother suspected she had a second type of cancer, and if so would be eligible for a free research study. Because she didn't have health insurance, she got whatever doctor the hospital assigned and she kept getting this guy. He refused to sign off saying she had the second type of cancer and he refused to admit her to the hospital, even when she was having more than 4 grand mals a week.
About a month and a half after her mother initially contacted them, she got them to look at her records, and the research team determined that she did in fact have the cancer they were studying and flew her out to their research facility. Unfortunately, by the time she got there, the researches said the cancer was 1-2 weeks beyond the effective window for their proposed treatment.
In the meantime, Florida legislators were working a bill to eliminate the bonus for specialists called into an ER. The young lady returned to Florida in time to see the bill passed. On her very next trip to the ER for a grand mal, the doctor that had several dozen times previously refused to admit her to the hospital finally admitted her (now that he wasn't going to get any more bonuses from ER visits)!
To add insult to injury, the young lady was a veteran from the first Gulf War. She died a little less than 3 months after being laid off. The VA still hadn't processed her paperwork to get her in the system.
It was not only excruciatingly depressing watching this young lady and her family's battle with cancer, it was a serious wake-up call about the problems with our health care system!
I've heard that doctors get a bonus per baby they deliver, so some will recommend C-sections when it looks like the baby won't be born before the end of their shift.
Maybe the doctor slammed the door because she was really looking forward to going shopping with her bonus (like an angry retail customer that once told me I was "taking money out of his pocket" because I wouldn't give him an expired sale price on a stack of blank CD-Rs).
That is very, very scary. I wonder if this problem also exists in other countries besides the U.S.
AFAIK it's nigh impossible to get away with this in the EU, or at least in Belgium. Belgium's worried about an increasing C-section rate, but at 20% it's still far below those in the U.S. it seems (which was ±33% in 2010/2011).
Also: is the cost actually USD $60,000 or is that a typo? That'd be about 10 times the rate in Belgium!
My insurance was billed $50,000 for my extremely uncomplicated vaginal birth. They didn't pay that much because of negotiated discounts, but that was the bill, and is what I would have been charged without insurance. (I live in the US).
If you hadn't had insurance, that's what you would have been charged, but not what you'd have ended up paying. Their numbers are fake in the first place and you can usually negotiate things down a lot closer to the (still insane) insurance price.
Our deductible sucks so we do this all the time. If you have cash in the bank, ask what they'd be willing to do if you pay 100% today (money now is worth more than the same amount in the future, and a lot more than money discharged in bankruptcy).
Challenge every line item. Every $600 bandaid and sleeping pill. It really helps here if you have evidence of what someone else paid for the same or similar procedure.
If they won't budge, take a payment plan with the absolute lowest possible monthly payment you can get them to accept.
You need to seek out medical bill negotiation companies. They can do this for you, very successfully. Or just write a letter to the governor of your state, state attorney in cc and demand a "real" bill, not a fraudulent one.
In the US a large part of it is driven by malpractice lawsuits for cerebral palsy. If you have a child born with CP after a vaginal delivery, even if the delivery is uncomplicated, it's pretty much a guaranteed malpractice payday here.
Are you really implying that the insane quoted cost of a C-Section is caused by something like '$10 000 - C-Section itself; $50 000 - malpractice insurance' ?
We actually shopped around until we found a hospital in our area with low c-section rates. On a related note, the anesthesiologist was paid close to $10k for administering the epidural.
Here in Norway, we were refused a c-section as my wife being fed up after 26 hours wasn't a valid reason for having one.
It also cost $0 total, with a baby delivered and 5 days in the 'new-parents-hotel' at the hospital, which included monitoring, help and instruction, and vaccines.
Our insurance company sent us a letter explaining that the anesthesiologist was out of network, and sent us a check for $9,500. A month later we received a bill directly from the anesthesiologist for the same amount, and we paid him ourselves. I obviously can't say what happened after he deposited that check, but I am quite certain that he was paid $9,500.
IIRC, the bill for one of my kids was $18K, but it was a natural birth. My insurance was crap, and I still had to pay $3K ~ $4K of that (by comparison my parents paid ~$60 out of pocket for me).
Or are you under the delusion that you don't pay for it? Just because you aren't charged doesn't mean you haven't paid for it, and probably more in taxes.
Some countries prefer to pay for this stuff via taxes, others individually.
And in the US free insurance is available for pregnant women who can't otherwise afford insurance, and has been for years (i.e. nothing to do with obamacare).
I watched a documentary (on Netflix) which said c-section rates go up in America at around 4PM so doctors could get home and not spend the night waiting. This explains why we are 34th in Infant mortality rates.
I suggest following Dr. Keith Smith's blog http://surgerycenterofoklahoma.tumblr.com/ In one post he takes apart a bill sent to him by his friend. He boils the $120k charge down to 25k.
I am in same situation and I cant do what I generally do for medical issues in family: flying to India. If my child is born in India it will lose American Citizenship. I have got a no choice.
search locally for midwives. if the child is healthy they will do home deliveries for a fraction of the cost. of course, that's a secret to, not many people "shop" around yet, unfortunately, but that's probably going to change now.
My wife was in labor for a bit less than a day. Baby was fine, everything good, but apparently we were taking too long. Doctor demanded we do a c-section. When we said we wanted to wait, she walked out, slamming the door. We got scared, they made 60K for about 20 minutes of work. Guess what the c-section rate at that hospital is? 50%. Not kidding. I'm in the wrong business.
http://www.icanofnj.com/hospitalcsectionrates.htm