It sounds like she was six months pregnant and went to Hawaii with her husband. She purchased travel insurance. Her water broke, she was placed on bed rest in the hospital, gave birth, and the baby stayed in the hospital in intensive care.
Her bill? About $950,000, and the insurance company doesn’t want to pay.
My question is, if the woman and her husband don’t pay, what can the hospital really do to her?
I have never been able to get a link to work, but I’m trying!
I’m curious how it costs a million dollars to take care of a baby for a few weeks.
Reading further… insurance company says she was already being treated for a high risk pregnancy so this is excluded as a pre-existing condition. The couple and their Canadian doctor say she had a bladder infection that led to bleeding but this was not a high-risk pregnancy.
Time for lawyers to battle it out in court. One unanswered question… She was on hospital bed rest for several weeks. Could she not have been repatriated safely?
As to what the hospital can do if they don’t pay? Not much. Send it to collections. But trying to collect across an international border is not easy.
Neonatal cares for 2 months for a preemie born 9 weeks early is going to rack up the medical bills pretty damn fast. Not to mention how much it cost to take care of the mother that had to go on bed rest and the attendant complications.
What do Canadians usually do when traveling? Do they customarily purchase travel insurance, or does the single-payer insurance they already have cover them out of the country?
Canadian health care does not cover Canadians for medical lservices rendered outside Canadda, except in unusual criumstances. This is not one of them.
Similarly, US Medicate does not cover out of country.
To begin with you have to understand that health care in Canada is run by the provinces and funded from both federal and provincial coffers.
Ontario does cover emergency issues but a restricted rate and the government strongly recommends that you get travel insurance. This is, in fact, exactly what the woman in question did.
Saskatchewan does the same thing
I suppose you could argue that the baby’s condition could be considered a 2 month emergency but I’m not a healthcare expert.
The $950,000 is probably the list price, which nobody ever actually pays. After some negotiation, the hospital will probably settle for just $95,000. I don’t mean to say that isn’t a large amount of money.
And if Blue Cross is ever forced to pay, it’s unlikely they will have to fork over the list price either.
I realize that the woman may not have been covered by insurance and hence not really entitled to the discount insurance price, but I understand that in instances like this, hospitals often end up settling for the insurance rate.
Most people have or purchase travel insurance. Provincial health insurance systems offer only limited out-of-country coverage (but, though they are provincially administered, they do apply in any other CANADIAN province.)
Most travel insurance, however, is rife with exceptions and riders so the insurance company doesn’t actually have to pay you.
Bed rest might have literally meant that she could not get out of bed for any reason. Bedpans and all the rest. It sounds like they were trying their hardest to keep the baby in as long as possible - and a 9 weeks early preemie has much better survival rates than a 15 week early preemie. So moving her all the way back to Canada would have been a dangerous move.
RickJay has given a good answer that I’ll corroborate; we visit the US fairly frequently, and we never go to the US without purchasing extra medical insurance first.
As well, some employers include out-of-country health care in their benefits package.
Repossess the baby?
It’s important to note this event happened last year. If it happened now, Blue Cross would have covered the whole thing (except for probably a few thousand dollars in co-pays and deductables).
My daughter, an American citizen and permanent resident of Canada, buys travel insurance when she comes down to visit us. (We live about two hours apart, on different sides of the border.)
I don’t see how that’s relevant.
Ha!!
The baby is an American citizen, but as a minor, surely can’t be forced to come back and work off the bill. Yet!
Hmmm. He can’t be held responsible for his mother’s medical bills. But I suppose he can be held responsible for the portion relating to his own care. He could file for bankruptcy. I imagine his debt vastly exceeds his assets and this might be the perfect time to do it! It will age off his credit report before he becomes eligible to get a mortgage.
Yes, I realize his parents probably agreed to cover his expenses when they checked in and the infant’s bankruptcy wouldn’t discharge their responsibility. And I don’t know what Hawaii law says about parental liability for medical expenses.
But on the bright side, babies born in Hawaii are eligible to become president!
The person in question is Canadian so changes in America health insurance coverage wouldn’t be a factor.
Unless the baby renounces her American citizenship, she will have to pay American taxes on her Canadian income once she starts earning an upper-middle class income. Most countries don’t tax foreign earned income, but the USA is exceptional in this respect.