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Our son spent 3.5 weeks at our home NICU before being transferred to another hospital out of state. We got a bill for $120,000 from our hospital when my insurance said they would not cover it. Eventually we got it worked out.

@FaithFertility: it's absolutely terrifying to think about paying those kinds of bills without insurance. I don't understand it either.

It's so crazy. If you look at what the insurance company pays it's significantly less too. So they charge those without insurance, the people that are probably least likely to be able to afford it, so much more than they charge the insurance companies. American healthcare is so messed up.

My son was in the NICU for 12 days and we refer to him as the $100,000 baby. He needed very little intervention (no ventilation, etc.) but just the stay was a crazy amount of money. Thankfully, we have great insurance and paid very little - the most expensive thing we paid for was his circumcision LOL.

Our twins were in the NICU for 8 days and their total bills were over 50,000 each. Thankfully we had awesome insurance at the time and paid pennies on the dollar for that, but still. I cannot even imagine what the cost would be for a micro-preemie.

It's crazy. I had a one night stay for L&D for a stillborn baby and the bill was $20k. We have a high deductible plan so I had to pay like 5k. It sucked.

Ok, flip side of the coin. Say you had to hire/set up your own care providers for a sick newborn.

1. Qualified staff around the clock. Find at least 2 good nurses, what do they make per hour that they are there with your child. 4 days x 24 hrs x highly qualified rate = $$$ Plus add in doctor care to set up treatment plan. Lower amount of hours needed for consultation but even higher rate.

2. Equipment. NICU has some of the best equipment

3. Testing and labs. Yes, to POAS is cheap and easy, but it does cost money to have someone bring you the necessary test, read and record the results, etc.

4. General facilities and overhead. And yes I'm sure there is profit in here as well.

I just dont understand how people DONT see how these costs are actually probably very reasonable for world class care.

@FaithFertility: Oh last time I saw the bills from the hospital (no NICU just regular delivery) and they are insane! This time I just paid deductible so I never saw anything itemized. But I was told I might get a bill for DD's short NICU stint too. Healthcare is crazy. For half my pregnancy I had a high deductible plan (aka worst plan ever) and had to pretty much pay OOP for most things and all those bills were just INSANE. Like how can anyone afford to be healthy?!

@T.H.O.U.: agreed - I would never want to compromise quality care for cheap cost, but it's unrealistic to think people without insurance can afford a 70k bill! I had an amazing experience with Jack's NICU stay - I completely fell in love with the nurses and the care they provided for him, so I didn't really mind fighting about the cost a little bit after but still... 14 months to resolve... just glad it's over with!

they also have to charge an inflated rate because some insurances will reimburse 100% of the bill, yet some insurances will only cover 25% or less. Its a stupid game of numbers. If a routine urinalysis should really in normal life cost $50, some insurances will reimburse $45, many will reimburse $5. So to make up for all of the insurances that only reimburse $5, they inflate the rate to $100, and those insurances that cover 95% of the inflated rate make up the difference for the poorly-reimbursing insurances. Its dumb. But if you look at the differences between reimbursements in the actual insurances, the differences are mind-boggling. So I'm not exactly sure that the hospital is to blame; they are simply playing the game. Except somewhere along the way the rules got TOTALLY screwed up. A hospital, as crazy as it sounds, does need to make a profit. Its a business. Just look at all of the recent NYC hospital closures as an example.

For my 2nd birth, I had a fast labor and was at work an hour away when I went into labor--so long story short, I got to L&D just as I was ready to push and had LO2 within 10 minutes. No time to even put on a gown or get an IV or anything.

Then I had a totally routine 2 day hospital stay--no complications. LO2 had no complications. No time in the NICU.

So imagine my surprise when I got an online EOB and saw that the hospital charged 3 bills:

-Labor: $27,000
-Postpartum care: $12,000
-newborn care: $14,000

I was like.....27k for WHAT? The doctor stitched me up after, and I was in an OR for an hour for skin-to-skin time because they I delivered in there because they didn't have time to get a regular labor room ready. I've heard they have to pay for OR time, so I could see a charge for that. But 27k for a med free, IV free, complication free, 10 minute labor and delivery?

In the end, my insurance company negotiated them down to:
Labor: $1200
Post partum care: $2000
Infant care:$6500

I paid $10 copay for everything combined. Crazy.

@T.H.O.U.: no the patient wouldn't pay the difference in most instances (PPO, HMO). This is the invisible stuff you don't see when you have an insurance that you pay a co-pay and then minimal payments after that. You might get a small co-insurance bill (10-20% of those agreed upon rates depending on the insurance) You would get a much larger bill if you were on a HDHP and had to meet a certain deductible. But you'd only be paying the agreed-upon contracted rate, either the $45 or the $5. And there are a heck of a lot of insurances that reimburse @ $5, not the $45 nowadays. And some insurances figure out their reimbursement numbers based on percentages, so for example they will reimburse the urinalysis @ 75% of the total charge, so hospitals will jack up their charges to take advantage of that (again making up for those insurances that only reimburse at 5%) whereas the true cost of the urinalysis has remained the same.