It still cost 3 or 4 thousand dollars. So it's not necessarily those six figure costs that are tough to deal with but even routine hospital care that gets very expensive in the US. I'm fortunate that we can afford that cost. But for a lot of people even making the payments on that would be a hardship. We didn't even know it would cost that much even though we had called our insurance to try to figure it out. Nobody can tell you how much it will cost until you incur the cost which is absurd. And the hospital "price lists" are beyond useless.
It shouldn't cost anything to birth a child in a hospital setting like a birth center in any civilized country, and we shouldn't have to deal with billing issues and insurance companies in the insane first 12 weeks of a child's life when we're sleep deprived and just dealing with actual medical issues and adjustment. We've spent collectively hours on the phone with insurance for this and various other charges. The "private payer" "employer provided" system constantly produces bad experiences and outcomes for everyone. Every insurance provider I've had over the past 5 years is a company that constantly screws up and that I can't fire, unlike my car insurance.
The American healthcare system doesn't bankrupt us right away, but it does so slowly by bleeding us for costs we shouldn't have to pay and by robbing us of time right when we need it most.
