Insurance question

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Originally Posted by Heatherbella

Well that's not TOO bad. I'd have a hard time coming up with that money right now though. Do people use credit cards or do they go on some sort of payment plan for this sort of thing?

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We paid in installments with the OB to cover the deductible and then just paid as I could for the hospital bill last time. It took awhile, but make sure to keep your bills and deduct them from your taxes. I got a lot back that way when I had DS.

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Originally Posted by PCCGirl813

We have an HSA. You pick an amount for the year and it goes into an account for you. Then the total gets divided by your paychecks and you get a little deducted every week. But you have access to the full amount on Jan 1. So we put $2500 in and we can spend it all now, it just keeps deducting out if your pay all year. Ours comes to roughly $40/week. And I never have to worry about unexpected medical bills unless we go over $2500. It's nice.

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That's exactly what I am planning on doing. Since I just started the new job I have the opportunity to restart my Health spending account. I love that it is going to save me $600 in taxes at least!

I also do the daycare spending and that saves us almost $1500 for the year.

My insurance gave me an out of pocket estimate of $3,400. I put $2,400 in my FSA and DH has $3,000 in his HSA (he gets $700 just for doing a health assessment). He can use his for me and vice versa so we figure we are set. I have already paid my OB for my portion of her services throughout the PG so all I am left with is the hospital, albeit the largest portion. Thanks for the tip, Leah! I will definitely ask for a discount since we will be paying in full!

Cost of labor/delivery completely varies by where you live. In Kalamazoo MI, a non medicated, no intervention of any kind type of birth still cost around $8000 at the hospitals there. Seriously all they did was give me a room and catch the baby, and it was $8000. Ridiculous. After insurance we ended up paying about $1500.

Here in NM, hospital births are much cheaper - just under $4000 I believe. Anyway, I am choosing a birth center instead and the total cost of all my care and delivery there is just over $3000, and insurance does cover most of it.

Both induced vaginal deliveries but different insurance...
#1 cost just shy of $6000 (which was our deductible for maternity...great insurance otherwise but yikes!)
#2 we paid about $2500 and insurance picked up the rest.

This one is under the same insurance as #2 thankfully.

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Originally Posted by Momma Leah

I really don't remember. We have an extremely high deductible on ours because we are self employed and it brings the premium down. We have also changed plans since DD, but we now have a HSA, which is great! My hospital too will give a 50% discount if you pay the whole bill up front. A lot of places will do that if you just ask.

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50%?!?!? That's awesome!! Mine did like 10-15% (can't remember). Still, I'll take it!

Ashley, same here ours offered 10% when paying up front. I am doing an FSA through my work and putting in the $2500 max allowed for the year. Hoping that covers a good bit but I believe it was about $4,000 out of pocket with DS2. Which I found ridiculous since it was about the same OOP cost as I had with DS1 and he was a preemie who spent 17 days in the NICU and I had a 6 day stay myself with lots of other interventions to stall labor and administer shots to help his development. My birth with DS2 was basically the same as Laurie described...they gave us a room and caught him...I was there a little over 24 hrs but only b/c they wouldn't discharge me the first day. He was born at 6 am...I could have gone home that day. :p Anyway total cost was just under $8,000 so I actually paid over half due to a high deductible. And his birth was 10's of thousands less than DS1. Go figure!

FREEEEEEEEE! But we pay higher taxes.

Free here too