Multiple commenters are raising this point, so perhaps you should consider that you aren't conveying this information well?
2. If we weren't trying to have kids, our options for purchasing health insurance expand drastically. Individual marketplace plans become a viable, for instance, since the "not covering childbirth" issue goes away. I mention the short-comings of the individual health insurance marketplace at least twice in this regard, including a big pull quote explaining the ACA work-around with child birth coverage.
Yes, but crucially none of those expanded options cost $0, so I still don't understand your math at all. I feel like we're talking in circles here.
You should be deducting a substantially non-zero number from the amount in the headline to account for your "normal" non-childbirth-year best-case medical insurance premiums (or out-of-pocket cash costs if foregoing insurance altogether).
If this was true it would be plastered in every newspaper for the last 15 years.
