The US is the most expensive nation in which to have a baby
First kid was no cost to us. My wife was on insurance with her employer. Long day, but no complications. I kept waiting for a bill that never came. Couldn&#x27;t believe we didn&#x27;t pay anything!<p>By the time the second kid came around, we were self-insured on the healthcare.gov marketplace. We ended up paying $5000 out of pocket - $2k for the prenatal care and doctors&#x27; services, $3k for the delivery and stay at the hospital.<p>We made a $1500 mistake. My wife had a really fast and normal delivery, but it was so fast that they didn&#x27;t have time to administer an antibiotic that they otherwise would have. They wanted to monitor her for a day to look for an infection. We said okay, but if I had more closely read my policy I&#x27;d have learned that the policy had a $1500&#x2F;day copay for labor and delivery. We&#x27;d have taken our chances and gone home had we known.<p>Kid three is coming! And this year&#x27;s marketplace plan says that we&#x27;re on our own up to the individual deductible of $6950. That&#x27;s a bronze plan that carries a $950&#x2F;month premium for 4 people; financial assistance from the government drops that down to $700&#x2F;month. So we pay $8400&#x2F;year for the privilege of not paying more than $7000 for an individual ($14,000 for the family) on our plan.<p>I don&#x27;t think state-run healthcare is the only solution here (nor is it an inherently bad solution; I&#x27;m no libertarian), but I have to think that I&#x27;m living in the worst of all worlds here. I&#x27;m forced to buy an expensive product that I&#x27;m afraid to use, a product that costs more than the roof over my head per month but delivers a fraction of the value. It&#x27;s expensive because it&#x27;s violating basic principles of insurance, because the people who made the law are trying to implement universal healthcare in a system that&#x27;s not built for that idea (at least not in the way it currently exists).<p>If I lived in a more market-based system there&#x27;d be price transparency, presumably a better way to monitor outcomes, and a lot more say in what kind of policy I could get to better accommodate the needs of my family.<p>Anyways, there are alternatives and means for assistance out there, and we&#x27;re exploring them. But we like our doctors and our hospital; it&#x27;s a shame that we have to look elsewhere. Not looking for sympathy, just adding a data point! My takeaway from that article was that maybe we should price out a trip to Spain sometime late in the third trimester :)