$21,744.00
That’s the hospital bill for room and board at Sierra Vista Hospital. Woohoo! I called and asked them to send me an itemized bill…really out of curiosity and to make sure that they aren’t charging me (well, Blue Cross) for services I didn’t receive. Apparently, that’s pretty commonplace. Besides, I’m curious how much my bag of Pitocin cost. I know that this doesn’t include Dr. Safarik’s costs and that as far as drugs go, there should only be the antibiotics they fed me (since my water was broken), the Pitocin, and 2 doses of Fentanol. I don’t know if this includes Henry’s first echocardiograph and/or the readings from Stanford. It certainly doesn’t include any prenatal care, postpartum care, or the pediatric cardiologist in Santa Barbara.
Luckily, we don’t have to pay that full amount. I figured the other day that Henry cost us about $8,000 out of pocket to be born. That doesn’t include diapers or clothes! :) It’s a lot of money, but it could be way more and hey, the kid’s worth it. I can see now why some people only have 2 kids…the 4 I want seems awful expensive! I just feel fortunate to not have to pay too much more than that.
I'm a mom to four. A wife to one. I believe in story. I love telling you about mine and would love to hear yours. There's really no sense in wasting our suffering and not sharing in each other's joy. We're all in this together...even if it doesn't always feel like it.
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Wow!! I can’t believe it was that high! Dillon’s birth was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30k and that included my 6 nights in the hospital.
we’ve been fortunate to have good insurance, especially with nehemiah. nehemiah was a heck of a lot cheaper than zeb. as mike says, “they practically paid us to have nehemiah.”
OMG…well now I’m thoroughly freaked. I’ll probably be at Sierra Vista as well. I have to remind myself that it’s worth it…right???
Our insurance covers everything up until the birth and then we have to pay 10% – is that how yours worked out? I’m just curious
Don’t freak out. Our insurance changed mid-pregnancy. Originally, we would have had a deductible of $500 and then be responsible for 40% of everything. WAAAY expensive! Then, it changed to a deductible of $3,000 and then everything is covered 100%. The new insurance works out well for major medical like a car accident or a birth. It will kinda stink when nothing huge is going on because we may never hit our $3k with standard dr. visits. Plus, we had to pay the midwife’s fees (which aren’t covered by insurance). We knew going into it that if we ended up being a hospital transfer (from a home birth), that we would end up essentially being “double dinged”, but we didn’t want money to interfere with our desire to have a home birth…or attempt it. Oh the irony of it all! Some of the original tests and blood work fell under the original insurance policy…which is how we got to the $8K number.
It is totally worth it, and you’ll find a way to pay. Besides, they can’t send you to collections as long as you send them SOMETHING. $10 every month. Might take a while to pay off, but does it really matter? I mean, really?