That’s my wife. And she’s pregnant.When you have a baby, there are lots of costs to
consider. Isabel: Carseat, and a bassinet, a baby carrier, thermometer. Johnny: Wait,
wait, but how much is the actual hospital birth going to cost?
Healthcare in the US is significantly more expensive than in other countries. Some experts
say that this is partly because consumers don’t go around looking for prices comparing
them between hospitals. Like they do when they buy a car or anything else for that matter.
So I decided it’d try it out. And see if there was any way to discover in advance how
much we would be paying for our baby’s birth. What happens next is at once depressing and
horrifying, showing how broken and expensive the American health care system is.
There's no way I'm the only person who's ever had this question. Childbirth in the US is
the number one reason why people go to the hospital. Almost 4 million women are going
to give birth this year and most births are relatively uncomplicated. So you would think
that with such a common procedure the price would be generally well known.
VO: I wanted to know how much child birth usually costs, so I did what any good child
of the internet would do
I found this really disturbing study from the Yale medical school .It analyzed almost
800,000 low risk deliveries in the US, looking for the variation in cost just for the facilities,
meaning the hospital rooms and supplies and stuff like that.
For just the cost of the hospital room, this study found that the price varied between
$1,189 and $11,986. So I realized I am going to have to go ask the specific hospital where
my wife is giving birth figure this out. Every hospital has a giant list they call the chargemaster
which details all the services they provide and what they cost. And each item and service
in the hospital has a code. If a doctor spends 20 minutes with you, that’s a different
code and a different price than if they spent 40 minutes with you. Your insurance company
then negotiates a lower price for every single item on the list. So when my wife goes into
the hospital, The nurses have a bar code scanner that they use to scan every item she will
use. Everything from the IV tubes to the Ibuprofen gets scanned onto the bill. At the end of
it all, they put all the codes and prices onto one piece of paper which they call a
“claim" and send it off the insurance. The insurance looks at it and pays a certain percentage
of it based on my policy. The hospital then sends the remaining balance to me. So I figured
if I could get my hands on that master list of prices I could add up the price of the
delivery. Right? Well it wasn’t that easy. I called the hospital where Isabel is going
to give birth and got a message machine. So I decided to call a some other hospitals to
see if anyone could give me general pricing information about the cost of birth. So my
wife is pregnant. My wife is pregnant. My wife will be giving birth. My wife's pregnant
and I'm trying to get an idea of how much different services cost. Items that would
be on a bill. Different costs associated with labor and delivery. Hospital: One moment.
Ok give me one moment let me talk to my team lead. Certainly, let me connect you with the
billing office. I can connect you with our financial coordinator. What I'll have to do
is transfer you to the pricing line. I can transfer you. Johnny: So now I'm being transferred
to another line. Or something. I don't know. They're transferring me somewhere.
Answer the phone. Message Machine: I will be out of the office until Monday February 18th.
Johnny: I'm going to hang up and try this again. Message Machine: You've reached the
voicemail of Patient Priceline. I will be out of the office until February 18th. Johnny:
Everyone's out of the office. All agents are currently busy with other customers. Currently,
all of our operators are busy. I'm sorry, extension 59 didn't answer. Mash up of hold
messages. Johnny: No music this time? I just have to sit her on hold with no music. I'm
just trying to see if I can get a number. Hospital: You will not get a copy of that
until after the procedure. Johnny: Ok. Do you have that information though in terms
of like how much certain items cost? Hospital: no, um they will not present the cost until
after. Johnny: So there's literally no way for me to discover what the cost is until
after I buy is that right? Hospital: We do not keep that information on hand. Everything
is processed after. Johnny: Certainly that information exists in your hospital system
somewhere. Hospital: The itemized copy, all of that information is done after the procedure,
not before. Johnny: I haven't heard a single number from anyone about how much anything
costs. This is actually starting to become frustrating. Finally, after two weeks and
thirty phone calls I got ahold of a pricing consultant from the hospital where Isabel's
going to give birth. I finally just got a call back from a pricing consultant I wasn't
able to record it because she called me out of the blue. She had taken down all my insurance
information and was able to run it through her system and come up with an estimate quote.
And finally for the first time in two weeks, I heard a number. She said I would be paying
$347 for my wife's birth. She wasn't able to give me a breakdown of what that meant
or any items specifically. She was able to only give me that number. And when I pushed
on certain items she said she frankly didn't know. Apparently prices in a hospital are
beyond even a pricing consultant. And then one day, this happened. I think Izzy may be
going into labor. Here we go.
I forgot about healthcare prices for a moment and watched
my amazing wife go through a night of painful labor. She was the hero of the night and at
the end of it, we had a new member of our little family. Oliver was born with no complications
and a two day stay in the hospital. All very typical.
Well, I got the bill back in the mail
The insurance negotiated a lower--[Oliver cries]. So the bill that came to us--[Oliver
cries] So the bill that came to -- [Oliver cries]. Isabel: We got the final bill back
and the hospital charged sixteen thousand dollars. The negotiated price with the insurance
company was eight thousand dollars. They covered 90% of it and sent us the bill for $841 dollars.
Johnny: That's 500 dollars more than the pricing consultant quotes me for a typical, uncomplicated
birth which is what Isabel had. Our healthcare system suffers from a big problem which is
that there's huge variation in costs. But what seems to be the bigger problem is that
us consumers have no tools to find out where we fall in that pricing variation. The hospital
down the street could be a fairly cheap hospital or it could be an extremely expensive one--it
could be 10 time more expensive than the cheap ones. You have no idea and there's no way
to tell. And hopefully someday this will change. But in the meantime, we got a really cute
baby out of this whole thing. So, I'm not complaining.
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