I’ll tell you in June.
Don’t bother to call the pharmacy. Call your insurance company instead. If the $300 drug is in the insurance company’s formulary, the copay may be less than paying cash for the $30 drug. I’ve had some very expensive drugs cost me $3 out of pocket, while the theoretically cheaper alternative wasn’t covered at all.
On the other hand, if you don’t have drug coverage, it’s worth getting cash prices from the pharmacy and finding the cheapest, best alternative.
They very well might not have ever heard of either of those genetics tests, depending on what your midwife called them. The very best thing you can do before you go into the hospital is to verify that 1) all of the providers you might be working with are part of your network and 2) get procedure codes for everything you might even possibly have done. Those procedure codes will give you the ability to know exactly what you will pay for everything. It sucks to have to do it all but it is the best way to get prices for things ahead of time.
$50 co-pay for a $22,000 crash c-section.
I had both mine at home with a midwife and paid out of pocket (just offering an alternative perspective).
$1,200 for the 1st (born 1992), including all prenatal, 6 weeks of post-natal care for both mom and baby, and the actual birth.
8 yrs later, same midwife, $1,800 for the same deal.
All completely out of pocket/no insurance involved.
The insurance we had second time around wouldn’t pay for a home birth…but it gladly paid an average of 10 times as much per hospital delivery. Go figure. :rolleyes:
To add, I knew a couple with a kid born about the time my son was who HAD insurance and ended up with a $10,000 bill after the (perfectly uncomplicated) birth. They declared bankruptcy a few years later over it.
All those saying, “Oh, it only cost me a few bucks or nothing because I had insurance” are not only fortunate but maybe overlooking the costs incurred over years of paying premiums for services they maybe only rarely used. Just a thought.
The Little One’s birth, 11 months ago, racked up a $15k hospital bill and a $5k (I think?) OB bill; the insurance paid all but the out-of-pocket max, which I think was something like $2k. (And we have secondary insurance that picked that up, but anyway.)
My friend had a baby at home a week before I did, and her husband delivered (it was her third delivery, first two by midwife; I guess she figured by that time she and her husband were experts, and it did go smoothly). Cost: $0. But I wasn’t going to do that!
It all depends on your insurance. When our daughter was born, we paid about $30 for the rental of a phone in the hospital room. And the birth was complicated, too.
But we had a very good plan back then. Our current plan is nowhere near as good (not that another child is likely).
I didn’t keep track of line items, but the overall pregnancy and delivery added up to something like $20,000: we may have paid something like 10% of that out of pocket. This included some issues involving an endocrinologist, as well as a c-section at the end.
Two children. One born whilst I was in uniform, but at a civilian hospital, the other born after I’d mustered out.
Net cost (each) after insurance paid: Nada. Zip. Zipp-o. Zilch.
I paid a $10 co-pay at my first prenatal visit, which covered all doctor visits, labor and delivery, and all the baby’s care in the hospital.
$20 copay, covered all visits and the delivery.
We did have one out of network doctor submit a bill, but we disputed it and the insurance company agreed to cover it as in-network.