Quickening in the Tummy, Cheaper Baby Health Care Please

I totally feel like I have quickening in the tummy. It is weird and wacky and wild. It feels like a baby is moving around in there and doing somersaults, like Adeline used to do before she was born. But I know I'm not pregnant. But wouldn't that be funny if I was and didn't know it and I ended up on that, "I didn't even know I was pregnant" show and had the baby in the bathtub or something.

Seriously though, lately I've been thinking about doing a home birth. I think having a baby is costing a ridiculous amount of money these days, and also we lost our health insurance not long ago and lately health insurance companies have been writing into the contracts that you have to wait a YEAR OR TWO before you can conceive so they can make up the cost? (This is what our new health insurance is all about.) I would be mad at them, except this is a complex problem that didn't come about because of something THEY (the insurance companies) did, so instead I can be mad at rising health care costs, at hospitals and doctors charging up the wazoo and ordering C-sections all over the place so that the average birth at a hospital costs about $20,000 to $30,000, and a birth with a C-section can cost up to $100,000 or more!?! This is insanity!

What made me think about it (what made me "go there," ah yeah, I went there) was that I am kind of astounded that it cost about $30,000 for me to have Adeline. I did NOT have a C-section, although the docs were pushing for one and Adeline was having some stress and dropping blood pressure here and there, something to watch, but nothing too serious yet. I know it was because my body wasn't ready to deliver her yet, I had some rupture and water breaking but no labor pains, although the computer was picking up consistent contractions every 2 minutes. I think I could have benefitted from waiting longer to go to the hospital, continue in my routine until my body was ready, so maybe that's what I'll do next time. Let my body be ready to deliver, not having to administer pitocin (what they did in my case). I was barely dilated. Like a 2, but I'm pretty sure the doc was rounding up to try to keep me from stressing out.

Continuing, the doctor ordered that I have C-section labs done, in case they needed to quickly open me up. So the C-section labs were run. And I'm telling you, lab tests are NOT cheap. Especially ones for Cystic Fibrosis, when your OB/GYN doctor orders them for you, even though you know you have no family history of it, your parents do not have it and neither do your husband's, so it is literally impossible for me to have it, genetically speaking. (I think he thought I was Jewish, and Jewish populations have a higher genetic risk.) But I still have to pay $375 for a lab test that was a waste that I didn't want! I'm pretty sure that the lab results themselves cost a large portion of that $30,000 baby bill. Which I didn't end up needing. And which I probably wouldn't have needed had I labored longer at home. Luckily our health insurance helped pay the cost so I think that with all the prenatal care factored in, I paid about $5,000 for Adeline while the health care company covered the rest, the $25,000. I'm pretty sure I still got charged for a C-section although I did not have one, because I bet whoever was preparing the bill saw that I had the labs so they probably assumed that I had the C-section, and tacked that onto the bill. Because the insurance company isn't going to look too closely. The hospital can get away with it. And most patients are apathetic to the whole process and don't read the fine print on their bills as long as they know the insurance is covering it!

I was talking to a friend the other day who had a C-section and she said that she had to stay an extra five days in the hospital (something like that) and her bills all totalled up came to a whooping $100,000! I seriously cannot fathom that! What the what? Did the room cost $15,000 a day?!? I hope it was some beach-front property in The Hamptons, for those prices!) Some of my other friends who have had C-sections did not have a bill that large, so I'm wondering why the discrepancy? Did they overcharge? Slide something extra through? And why are the prices so hush-hush? They really need to be open and transparent, and more competitive. She gave birth at a different hospital than I did (but literally across the "street," the freeway, I gave birth at Mercy St Johns and she was at MoBap) and I know that they have similar features and similar prices.

If we are concerned about rising health care costs, we should be concerned about the waste and excess going on. Hospitals love to "pad the account," so to speak. One of the big reasons that they do this is because of a government bill passed back in the 1980s, called EMTALA. (Can you believe it? The government got involved and prices went up?) Basically it says that a hospital cannot refuse care, even if they know that you cannot pay. So lots of people are getting free, expensive hospital care when they could have gone to an Urgent Care clinic for their child's sore throat or ear infection, rather than costing about 8 times more to go to a hospital's ER to get the same treatment (usually with longer wait times because of Triage), but who cares, right? It's "FREE"!

No, it's not free. ERs are the big money pit of the hospital, so they make up for it in other procedures, baby births being a great way to make up the money. It's like a company charging more for clothes because 10% of the people keep coming in and shop-lifting, walking away with "FREE" clothes. The company still needs money to operate, so they have to charge more to the paying customers to stay in business and not go bankrupt. And trust me, lots of ERs have made lots of hospitals go belly-up. So then nobody can get ANY CARE, not paying customers, not customers who fail to pay for something that does cost a lot of money.

Also, the women themselves are pushing for C-sections because they like to know when and where they are delivering, not just knowing it could be in the fuzzy, two-week window. (Maybe not even then!) If we are tired of rising health costs, then we need to be more responsible patients and speak out about abuses to the system, and not abuse the system ourselves.

A sneaky trick I found out from my mom and sister (who unfortunately has health care insurance woes so that they will not insure her) found a good, reasonable doctor and have a great method for paying the bills. At her pre-natal visits, she would pay the bill immediately, in cash. The health care companies and the doctors' offices have a trick where the doctor's office usually charges A LOT more than they should for the visit, but that's okay because the bill then goes to the insurance, and they bargain down the bill so that it's usually about half the amount. Well if you pay immediately, the doctor usually likes this because the whole "bargaining" prcoess between Dr office and insurance can take anywhere from 2-8 weeks. The doctor would usually prefer to get paid immediately and not have to go through all this. And that in itself keeps prices down, paying immediately. So they will usually cut you a deal. Hopefully they will already take the price down by half, usually more.

The big secret:
Let me tell you, my sister did this (she HAD to do this, there was no option) for her pre-natal visits and for the birth. Her birth bills cost $2,000. And that included the Epidural. She did give birth vaginally, no C-section, no pitocin. By the way, she delivered at Davis hospital in Layton, Utah, where I was born (back when it was called Humana). I am seriously considering doing this for my next child, maybe go visit Grandma Brown for a few months while I finish growing the baby, because they don't let you fly the friendly skies once you're eight months pregnant, and then deliver it at a reasonable hospital for a fraction of the cost. All while taking a little vacation for less than it would cost me to deliver at a local Missouri hospital. Oh yes, and pay in cash before I left the premises. Because they will tack a lot of stuff on as that bill goes through the system and travels to you through the mail. Trust me.

Ya, I might be down with homebirth. Except for the mess I would have to clean up. Because seriously, who's the one who cleans up around here? I would be cleaning up my own labor mess. And trust me, it makes a big mess. My water breaking alone was like the gushing of Niagra Falls on the hospital bed, enough that my husband just made a completely astounded noise and couldn't stop mentioning it for a few days. Maybe laboring in the bathtub is not such a bad idea. Just throw a bunch of towels in there that I don't care about, to make it warmer and more comfortable. And then just toss those in a garbage bag and toss that into the trash when it's all over. I'll have to teach Adam how to sew me back up. That was probably the hardest thing that the doctor did, because it was basically the nurse who got the baby out of me. I only had to push 15 minutes, and then she told me to stop because she had to run and get the doctor so he could catch and cut the cord. And sew me up. And yes, that will be $30,000, thank you, come again. Adam could do that for $10 and some fishing line. Maybe I'll hire a nurse, because they did help a lot to get the baby cleaned up and suctioned what needed suctioning. Seriously the nurses are doing most of the work. And if I really need a C-section, then I'll be singing praises to the doctor.

It is typically safer to have a homebirth after you've already had one kid because you are more used to the process, although who in the heck gets used to THAT!?! Pushing out a watermelon through a tiny opening? But I would be less likely to have complications. And if I do, a hospital is nearby and I'd head there. I'm no dummy. Just trying to save money and not be a part of these "rising health care costs" that we are doing to ourselves.