A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
Maybe they denied to cover them because of the ridiculously high bill, have you ever thought about that?
Edit: It seems the cost of a normal birth in Germany is at most €7500 for a tourist with no insurance.
Helllllo the baby was 7 weeks premature and in intensive care for 3 weeks. The cost of a normal birth is totally irrelevant. You didn’t read the article, obviously.
I paid literally zero for either of my kids births right here in California.
According to this study, the mean total cost of NICU in the UK for preterm babies at 31 weeks gestation is £27,401 and tourists should get charged the same if I’m reading this correctly.
So no, not even close to $200,000 or even the €100,000 you pulled out of thin air. Clearly this is reason enough to believe the cost of the healthcare in the US is what made the insurance company try to avoid paying. I don’t know why you’re defending the healthcare cost in the US without even doing a bit of research of how it normally is in Europe where the couple and the insurance company comes from.
Thank you for doing that research. I have done nothing here to defend costs in the US. As you said, even the number I pulled out of thin air was 100% more expensive in the US. Do I owe you some kind of apology for not guessing even worse?
My grandpa had a peacemaker installed, we received a (paid) bill for the cost of the operation (idk why or how, but I remember my mother showing it to me), it was 36k€. Sure the stay was shorter, but it’s also heart surgery on a frail patient with lots of other issues.
How much shorter was the stay? Maybe we can apply some multiplier. At least the example you’re offering is a fully loaded in-and-out final bill, but all this trying to compare the costs of different medical procedures is fumbling in the dark. We know medical costs in the US are higher, and we usually know by how much. The numbers I see in a quick search are $13.4K per capita annually for the US and $9.6k for Switzerland, likely with better outcomes. Was higher costs the reason this couple’s insurance declined them? Maybe. It’s a fair guess, but that’s all. If someone wants to tell me there’s never any back and forth with their EU public health program before a bill gets paid, nor with the private insurance carriers every EU citizen that can afford them also has, then wow, that will have been the best thing I’ve ever heard about healthcare in the EU.
Whether cost was the sole issue would have been a great question for the reporter to ask someone. But as you can see, they don’t even need to work that hard at their job to get the outrage clicks they need.