How much will your baby cost? $3K to $37K, study says

How much will your baby cost? $3K to $37K, study says

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SALT LAKE CITY — If you're planning staying on or under budget for your hospital delivery bill, you might be out of luck. A new study shows that delivery costs differ by the thousands between hospitals with no rhyme or reason to explain the differences.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, looked at data from 2011 for privately insured patients in California hospitals that had uncomplicated vaginal deliveries or caesarean sections. They looked at the cost of 76,766 vaginal deliveries and 32,660 caesarean sections.

The study showed that the average woman would be charged as little as $3,296 or as much as $37,227 for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery. Caesareans went for as little as $8,312 up to $70,908, depending on the hospital.

"We found that hospitals in markets with middling competition had significantly lower adjusted charges for vaginal deliveries, while hospitals with higher wage indices and case mixes, as well as for-profit hospitals, had higher adjusted charges," the authors wrote.

They also noted that hospitals with higher numbers of uninsured patients had significantly lower rates for c-sections while for-profit hospitals charged a lot more.


Every time I saw my OB-GYN, I would get a bill from her, which was reasonable and covered by insurance. Then a separate bill from the actual hospital which was ridiculous and hardly covered by insurance. And after (my daughter) was born, we got a bill from every single doctor who so much as stepped in the room in addition to the actual bills from the hospital.

–New mom Julene Knechtel


Despite using institutional and market-level factors in their formula, the research said it explained only about a third of the difference in charges.

How much will you really pay?

There is no way to predict it, and most likely, the final bill will shock you. The cost largely depends on your insurance and the billing practices at the hospital where you deliver your baby. New mom Julene Knechtel, of Seattle, said she wasn't so much shocked by the price of her hospital bill as she was about the way the billing was organized.

“Every time I saw my OB-GYN, I would get a bill from her, which was reasonable and covered by insurance,” Knechtel said. “Then a separate bill from the actual hospital which was ridiculous and hardly covered by insurance. And after (my daughter) was born, we got a bill from every single doctor who so much as stepped in the room in addition to the actual bills from the hospital.”

Other moms who can't afford the high cost of having a baby in the hospital, even with insurance, are turning to birth centers that don't always have close access to emergency operating rooms, but cost a lot less.

“We opted for a midwife at a free standing birth center,” Kuykendall, 29, said, “which charged $3,800 for everything — prenatal, labs, delivery, postpartum.”

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This was significantly lower than the $6,000 to $8,000 she was quoted from Houston-based hospitals.

These huge differences in prices also hurt small business owners that have to buy their own insurance.

“We are self-employed and have private insurance through Blue Cross,” said mom of three Andrea Roche, 29, who is expecting her fourth child. “There is no 'good' plan because all maternity has a $5K deductible. Child number four will cost about $8K assuming we have no major complications and that I leave the hospital in 24 hours as I did with the twins.”

Even though you have the right in most states to call your insurance and hospitals to find the best match for your budget, you'll probably have a hard time finding hospitals that are transparent about their costs. A study published in 2010 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine said that although most states have transparency price laws in place to allow patients to shop for care, only 28 percent of the hospitals surveyed responded with a price estimate for hospital stays and procedures.

This might partly explain why birth rates in the U.S. are at an all-time low, despite what your Facebook newsfeeds might suggest. Another new study showed that U.S. births hit an all-time high in 2007, but have steadily fallen since the economic downturn.

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FamilyLifestyle
Tracie Snowder

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