Have you paid your hospital bill off yet?

**In the US

For my first son I refused to. I paid all my bills met my deductible through the whole pregnancy but because my son was born in January they reset my insurance and it was as if I didn’t pay a dime and they charged me an insane amount.

I have Tricare and they paid for most of it. I went to a natural birth center and it was only $1000 out of pocket

My copay was 4K so I paid it 2 weeks after I was out of hospital.

Thank you Canada 😎👉👉

I have $600 left 😫🥳 Thankful for HSAs.. go pre-tax contributions !

Just paid off the first one after 2 years, now I'm getting ready to have another!

❤️ NHS ❤️

I have an Aflac hospital plan so I’m hoping that will cover the $150 a day and anything else my insurance doesn’t cover

It should be free.

UK but paid in advance for a private room (with private care), private physio and lactation specialist for afterwards. All paid up and ready to go.

Paid $1000 out of pocket with a good insurance in Texas. But it should be free. I agree. In Europe is free. I was so scared with the numbers I heard from another moms. 😮‍💨

I paid for the private room but otherwise covered by insurance.

It’s free in my country? That’s silly that you have to pay!

I'm curious , how much is it on average in the US to give birth, assuming there is no complications? ( I'm in the UK and come from France, so it's "free" on both countries, meaning paid by workers taxes)

UK here- Just so the US Americans here understand how the rest of the world treats women- All of my antenatal care including specialists, my c section in the hospital, all prescriptions, a midwife visiting my house for after care- everything- was absolutely free. I never received any bill whatsoever.

@Marie it all depends on your insurance. I had a c section and 3 day stay at hospital. I believe it was about $30K without insurance. My max out of pocket was $7K, so that’s how much I had to pay out pocket. I would have had to pay the same amount if it was natural

@Tara I agree but fundamentally you do get a bill. Every month you pay £100s in National Insurance contributions on top of taxes, that pays for the NHS. So by the time you’ve had a baby if you’ve been working like me you’ve paid thousands in NI contributions for over a decade for that care.

@Tara Maternity leave and care is insane here. Cost me $7k for hospital bills and then I paid a private doula another $3k for education prior to my labor, labor couching and lactation consulting after birth. I want another child but not sure if we can afford hospital bills and daycare for 2 kids

@SarahOh absolutely, and US Americans pay monthly (for most people, it’s much more than the NHs contribution) for health insurance in addition to taxes too AND they still have to pay for care when they need it.

I have pretty good insurance and my out of pocket maximum was about 3k for my care, plus about another 1k for my son's care in the hospital. My nightmare is if I have a hospital stay right at the end of the year and had to pay the out of pocket maximum for both years!

@Tara To clarify with my insurance we don’t pay a premium. But With my husbands insurance we would have to pay $400 a month for the 3 of us and still 20% out of pocket up to max out of pocket (6K) so if giving birth you do usually have to pay monthly premiums and then the max out of pocket,so 11K of we used my husbands insurance policy

@Kristen oh waw, thanks for sharing. That actually msut be the same costbin uk and France, the thing is patient font pay directly for the care but that still has a cost.

@Kristen thanks yeah I’m from the US originally and paid about $350/month for insurance for my husband and myself, I think our premium was $8,000 if I remember correctly. And we paid $40 for every specialist visit and several hundred per month in prescriptions. I can’t remember much more other than disgust.

@Tara People saying it's "free" in the UK, yes and no, we pay for it indirectly, which is still better but we shouldn't forgot that has a cost, check your payslip you'll see how much you pay towards NI. I still prefer this system, but just wanted to clarify for the US mum here

@Marie totally agree, we all contribute and as I explained above, people in the US ALSO pay monthly to their insurance companies AND still get bills at the point of care. What I meant was that we pay our fair share and we don’t get bills when we get care- any amount of care you needed whether it’s a plaster or months of chemotherapy, it’s all free.

@Tara yeah…. Would love to live in a progressive country where women’s health was valued and you could become a parent without such financial stress and a decent maternity leave

@Tara I’m in US, my health insurance is through employer and it’s $9 a month. And it’s a good insurance, it covers a lot.

@Sarah I didn’t even know this was a thing, how do you go about requesting this?

@Sarah yeah exactly, and whether or not you use the services you pay for them through your paycheck. Not complaining though

@Ema messaged you xx

@Kristen and is it the cost of a private or public hospital ?

@Marie public, it was in network with my insurance

@Kristen oh waw, I can't even imagine private then......thanks for your answers

No insurance covered it all

We paid $6k out of pocket for my homebirths. We only got reimbursed $2k for my 2nd birth.

I also wanna say Tricare covers regular hospital births 100% with no copay. It's just that I wanted a natural birth and those are more expensive.

Insurance covered it all

I deliberately got the best insurance that I could for the month of January (babies due date) for me and my husband our insurance will cost $770 a month- this is with no deductible. So the hospital stay and birth should be completely covered by this insurance. Once the baby is born I will switch our insurance back to our original more affordable plan. I’m from the UK originally so I can relate to many in the comments! It is rotten here.

Got a discount if we paid in the first 30 days so everything was done by then

@Marie we don’t pay anything in the UK it’s free x

@Mercella like I said it's free at the end but everybody that work do pay National Insurance contributions via your payslip which cover NHS cost for all. That was just to explain to the US mums the system here. It's free but still as a cost to the community. Still prefer that 🙂

@Marie But it is worth pointing out that no matter how much or little you use the NHS, our NI contributions do not change and are a pittance for what we get in return. Also NI is not solely for the NHS, in fact most of it is for social security benefits (ie. state pensions) and a portion is for the NHS. Side note…US friends, I’m so sorry this is your reality!!

I am in the US and it really depends on the insurance plan. I paid only $150 hospital admission copay for both of my hospital births. All of my care through the pregnancy was fully covered. We pay a monthly premium for the plan. We have really good insurance.

Amazed at UK people saying its free. The reality is it’s paid for by net paying tax payers. Those that pay on average 2k+ a month on tax and national insurance and sometimes much more.

@Sarah exactly my Tax and NI bill has been well over 2-3k each month for the last few years since I became a higher earner.

@Linda similarly, I get whacked about £4k a year just in NI (the other taxes are another crying matter😂). So from starting working as an adult to my first ever hospital visit whilst having a baby it’s been 10s of thousands in contributions alone. I paid for my birth 3/4 times over. Plus I have private medical insurance and in the UK it doesn’t cover birth as it’s a “voluntary” medical condition 🫠

@Linda thanks, this is what I was trying to explain, then I just gave up 😅