![]() “You’ll pay a higher deductible now but it’ll work out later.”Īnd when you’re getting close to the due date, taking your time can save a lot of money. “If you know you’re going to be pregnant this year, think about changing your insurance coverage,” Montecillo says. While it isn’t easy to time a pregnancy, the months leading up to your company’s health care enrollment period are an ideal time to make informed coverage changes. And if your network’s too small, you may be lucky enough to be able to expand it. Knowing what health care providers are in your network makes a huge cost difference. Maria Montecillo, a healthcare insurance and billing advocate for the New Jersey medical billing advocacy firm Medical Cost Advocate, says parents should get in the weeds of their health plan as soon as they know they’re expecting. ![]() How to Avoid the High Costs of Child Birth But, honestly, saying no to these add-ons is chump change compared to what you can save by doing a little homework ahead of time. Packing an iPad and a bottle of Advil in your go-bag can defray some of those gotchas. Some hospitals reportedly impose fees for using their TVs others can charge as much as $20 for an Ibuprofen. Some of the hospital costs, like medical tests for the baby and mother, can’t be avoided. “Four out of five of all dollars paid on behalf of the mother and the baby across that full episode from pregnancy through the postpartum and newborn period go into that relatively brief hospital window,” says Carol Sakala, Director of Childbirth Connection Programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families. Most labor costs happen later, during the mom’s short hospital stay following birth. While the real action of having a kid happens in the delivery room, that’s not what you pay for. “They can’t make their maximum reimbursement charge rate,” he says. Despite the overhead, private insurance pays hospitals according to fee-for-service schedules, meaning insurance pays more to hospitals for some types of patients, like the ones undergoing short stay surgical procedures requiring a battery of tests and procedures, than others, like the ones giving birth. Hospitals have to devote considerable time, resources, and staff for labor. Per Lillis, hospitals don’t make money off of obstetrics. Lillis, founder and CEO of New York City–based medical billing services firm Billing Geeks, notes that the high cost of birth for parents doesn’t translate into enormous profits for hospitals. But despite the price tag, births aren’t big money-makers for hospitals. If a C-Section is required? It’s considerably more. All told, a standard birth could run you roughly $30,000. The mean hospital stay expense is $18,000. In a 2013 national study of inpatient care costs, pregnancy and childbirth hospitalizations accounted for five of the 20 most expensive conditions for hospital stays covered by Medicaid and three of the 20 most expensive conditions for hospital stays covered by private insurance. But medical billing experts and maternity care advocates say it’s possible to manage the cost of childbirth through informed, careful decision-making. Giving birth in America is an expensive, confusing process where parents often feel like they have no choices or negotiating power. But compared to other parents, my family had it pretty easy. Sorting out the cost of birth was confusing and stressful. Months later, our insurance covered the room but, because of a billing error that took months to resolve, didn’t cover basic care. I was exhausted and unsure about our insurance coverage, so I opted for a lower-tier option. My first job as a new dad was choosing a recovery room at a Manhattan hospital known for luxury accommodations. Moments after my daughter’s birth, I basically had to negotiate the cost of a timeshare.
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