Childbirth Bill: $70

[SirRobin]

Holy Crap!

(CNN) -- Seventy dollars.
Gary Bender had difficulty believing what was right before his eyes. Bender, an accountant who lives in Irvine, California, was looking at a hospital bill he had found while going through the possessions of his late mother, Sylvia. "I'm kind of the family historian," he told me. "I keep things." What he was looking at was the bill for his own birth, in 1947.

The bill had been mailed to his parents after they, and he, had left Grant Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in May of that year. The grand total for his mother's six-day stay at Grant, for the use of the operating room, for his days in the nursery, for the various medicines and lab work -- for all aspects of his birth -- was $70. "It made me think, 'How did we get from that, to where we are today?'" Bender said. He was referring to the soaring costs of health care in the United States. For all the discussion of how out of hand the price of medical treatment has become, somehow that one old piece of paper put the subject in sharper focus for Bender than all the millions of words in news accounts analyzing the topic.

"It can't just be inflation, can it?" he asked. No, it can't. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $70 in 1947 would be equivalent to $726 in 2012 dollars. Does it cost $726 for a hospital stay to deliver a baby these days? Dream on. According to a 2011 report from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the cost for a hospital stay, including physician fees, for a conventional birth with no complications was a little over $11,000 in 2008, the most recent year the report covered. For a birth involving a Caesarean section, the cost was around $19,000. (While five- or six-day hospital stays were commonplace for mothers and newborns in the 1940s, today they routinely leave the hospital within 48 hours of childbirth -- so the higher costs are for shorter stays.) At Grant Hospital in Columbus -- now called Grant Medical Center -- a spokeswoman told me that the average cost for having a baby is around $15,000.

So what exactly has happened, for costs to rise so astronomically? A lot of things, said Dr. Gary Hankins of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, a former chair of ACOG's obstetric practice committee. The technology available to keep mothers and babies safe is light years removed from what was available in 1947, he said, and "regrettably, the technology is expensive." He said that in almost every way, new mothers and their babies are better off now than they were 65 years ago. The antibiotics that have been developed to fight infections, the improved surgical procedures, the sophisticated anesthesia, the highly accurate electronic fetal monitors and other medical machinery -- all provide advantages for mother and child that did not exist in 1947.

Medical malpractice insurance premiums figure into the high cost of childbirth today, he said. And there are some physicians who question whether all procedures that are regularly performed, increasing costs, are routinely necessary. But for all the frustration that patients feel about the price of medical care, one fact is indisputable: The rate of infant mortality, and the rate of mortality for new mothers, has plummeted, said Hankins. In 1950 nearly 30 infants out of 1,000 died at or soon after birth; in 2009, that number was 6.4 out of 1,000, according to the ACOG report. It may be more expensive to give birth to a child today, but both the mother and child, if there is trouble during delivery, have a much better chance of survival than they once did.

At Grant, where Gary Bender was born, Dr. Michael Sprague, medical director of women's health, told me that "infection, blood clots, hemorrhage -- our ability to diagnose and treat all of these" is considerably better today. "You never know who that patient is going to be," Sprague said -- the mother or baby who suddenly requires all the resources a hospital maintains, at great expense, to save lives during delivery. I sent copies of Gary Bender's childbirth bill to Hankins and Sprague. Both were amazed at the particulars: The hospital room charge for Sylvia Bender was $7 per day, for six days. The cost for Gary to stay in the nursery was $2 per day. The flat rate for maternity service was $15. Grant Hospital, by the way, was not an anomaly; a 1947 brochure from Santa Monica Hospital in California, to use one example, listed a similar price structure for having a baby: $17.50 for maternity service, $2 per day for the nursery, an extra $15 if the birth was by cesarean section.

And Gary Bender, who came into this world for $70? He told me that last year, the cost of the health insurance he and his employer sign up for, covering him and his wife, was in excess of $18,000 -- and that was before a single visit to a physician, and before a single prescription was filled. "It just astonishes me that in our lifetime, we have seen such extremes in medical costs," said Bender, who was one of more than 3.8 million American babies born in 1947. And who -- with that old hospital bill still in hand -- lived to tell the tale.

Doesn't it just seem rather ridiculous for the prices to go up that much?

[Rukentuts]

If people want the medicine of 1947, then they can have the bill from 1947. Advancements come at a price.

[Blueobelisk]

Best price ever was when the guy from Hangover 2 got like 8 stitches and his bullet wound cleaned for $6.

[SirRobin]

If people want the medicine of 1947, then they can have the bill from 1947. Advancements come at a price.

A ten thousand dollar plus price, for even shorter stays?

[Rukentuts]

A ten thousand dollar plus price, for even shorter stays?

The article actually addresses this.

At Grant, where Gary Bender was born, Dr. Michael Sprague, medical director of women's health, told me that "infection, blood clots, hemorrhage -- our ability to diagnose and treat all of these" is considerably better today. "You never know who that patient is going to be," Sprague said -- the mother or baby who suddenly requires all the resources a hospital maintains, at great expense, to save lives during delivery.

[sscavenger]

Capitalism, invisible hand of the free market... It is just greed plain and simple, if you can't afford it then go off and die. We have no use for people that can't pay.

[Mongoose19]

Capitalism, invisible hand of the free market... It is just greed plain and simple, if you can't afford it then go off and die. We have no use for people that can't pay.

No matter what those people could accomplisj in future. Sad world.

[Sunseeker]

If people want the medicine of 1947, then they can have the bill from 1947. Advancements come at a price.

Unless a woman is specifically at risk while having a baby, having a baby is part of the basic design of a woman. You can hire a midwife and it will probably only cost you a few hundred dollars for someone to help with birth. No hospital, no drugs, lots of pain, but otherwise: how humanity has been giving birth for thousands of years.

[Deleted]

What could $70 buy you in 1947?

[SirRobin]

The article actually addresses this.

Again, for ten thousand plus dollars more? For even shorter stays?

[Deleted]

If i understand it correctly it sounds pretty bad, and im glad i live in Holland!
Giving birth costs around 400 euro ish here, wich of that about 3/4 gets covered by my insurance.
So when i give birth i only have to pay 130 euros. But because i have a medical condition it gets covered fully and i don't have to pay anything!

[Xenden]

Part of medical billing is over billing the insurance so they get underpaid by the the insurance and in the the end end up with the amount that the service was worth. That was really wordy, an example:

An MRI is billed for $2000, the insurance will cover $1200 under your plan and the hospital agrees to take $1200 for the service, which is around what they wanted to begin with.

If you pay cash (which is not what Im advocating), the medical provider usually will discount the bill between 25%-40%. So, it isn't like i'm pulling this out of my ass. They have to overcharge otherwise they would get underpaid by the insurance.

[Slummish]

Holy Crap!



Doesn't it just seem rather ridiculous for the prices to go up that much?

Actually, if you read the article you posted... it's not ridiculous at all. The article plainly indicates why the cost of giving birth has increased beyond the parameters of normal inflation.

[Rukentuts]

Unless a woman is specifically at risk while having a baby, having a baby is part of the basic design of a woman. You can hire a midwife and it will probably only cost you a few hundred dollars for someone to help with birth. No hospital, no drugs, lots of pain, but otherwise: how humanity has been giving birth for thousands of years.

Yeah, but if by some off-chance there is internal bleeding, good luck trying to have a midwife save you then.

The hospital has to keep all this stuff on standby, because if they don't and a patient dies they will get sued out of their ass.

---------- Post added 2012-12-03 at 12:56 PM ----------

Again, for ten thousand plus dollars more? For even shorter stays?

Not exactly used in child delivery, but do you know how much a MRI machine costs? If people want the best healthcare, they need to pay the price. Otherwise like what smrund said, just hire a midwife.

[poser765]

Unless a woman is specifically at risk while having a baby, having a baby is part of the basic design of a woman. You can hire a midwife and it will probably only cost you a few hundred dollars for someone to help with birth. No hospital, no drugs, lots of pain, but otherwise: how humanity has been giving birth for thousands of years.

You realize of course that before modern medicine women and babies were lost during child birth a LOT. I have no problem letting my insurance company pay a boat load of money in order to have the best modern medical tech has to offer. Sure my wife could squeeze if out in the bathtub, but if something unforeseen happens I don't want to have to wait however long it takes the ambulance to get to my house and then her to the hospital.

[SirRobin]

An interesting tidbit. So cars average twenty times more expensive. Houses average almost twenty times more expensive. Yet the childbirth average is one hundred and fifty-seven times more expensive? Looks odd to me.

[Sinraye]

After I read the title, I thought the crazy part was that you had to pay for childbirth (even if its 70$) and then I read the article and realized that you have to pay a lot more. Seriously, you have to pay for childbirth?! SERIOUSLY?!

[Grym]

Is it really that shocking? Because I don't find it shocking at all.

Building and Land, cost A LOT more nowadays than back in 1947, if you bought a house in 1947, you bet you can sell it for a lot more than inflation has to offer.

Salary, doctors are now much more qualified than they were in 1947, a lot of the conditions back then could have been dangerous, now much more controlled, and of course, the doctors get paid more for being better, better quality doctor cost more, simple fact really. While the nurses might not be THAT much more knowledgable than back then, but, I doubt their salary only go in line of inflation.

Equipments, nowadays hospitals have much better equipments and machinery, and they were not free, that cost has to be passed onto consumers somehow.

Medication, medicines today are much better, again, more expensive.

Don't expect everything go in line of inflation, some industry goes up faster than others.

[Forfax]

70$ back in 47 , $70.00 had the same buying power as $734.75 in 2012.
That was a huge amount back in the day.

(source, http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm) (no idea if it legit or not , feel free to correct me.)

[Grym]

Seriously, you have to pay for childbirth?! SERIOUSLY?!

Because Hospital bed, food, midwifes, doctors, care, medicines, were grown on trees.