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't believe we didn't pay anything!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' services, $3k for the delivery and stay at the hospital.We made a $1500 mistake. My wife had a really fast and normal delivery, but it was so fast that they didn'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'd have learned that the policy had a $1500/day copay for labor and delivery. We'd have taken our chances and gone home had we known.Kid three is coming! And this year's marketplace plan says that we're on our own up to the individual deductible of $6950. That's a bronze plan that carries a $950/month premium for 4 people; financial assistance from the government drops that down to $700/month. So we pay $8400/year for the privilege of not paying more than $7000 for an individual ($14,000 for the family) on our plan.I don't think state-run healthcare is the only solution here (nor is it an inherently bad solution; I'm no libertarian), but I have to think that I'm living in the worst of all worlds here. I'm forced to buy an expensive product that I'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's expensive because it's violating basic principles of insurance, because the people who made the law are trying to implement universal healthcare in a system that's not built for that idea (at least not in the way it currently exists).If I lived in a more market-based system there'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.Anyways, there are alternatives and means for assistance out there, and we're exploring them. But we like our doctors and our hospital; it'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 :)