A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
isnt advisable by studies for pregnant woman to not travel outside thier country to avoid situations like these.
It’s less to avoid situations like this and more to avoid the stresses of travel and having something come up in a situation where medical care might not be available, or leaving you far away from your usual care team, or in a situation where you have a very fresh baby and you live 5000 miles away, which can make for a very rough trip home or a difficult recovery in a faraway place.
It really depends on various factors like how far into the pregnancy she is (travel when you’re 2 months in is vastly different to travel when you’re 8 months in), how urgent the need to travel is (traveling to go to an anime convention is vasly less urgent than traveling to lay your mom to rest), how far you’re traveling (a weekend saunter to the next town over is different than traveling half way around the globe (which it sounds like she did)), whether the doctor overseeing your care says its okay, and other stuff.
It’s advisable not to travel to, over, or near the United States regardless of pregnancy status
insurance in general in the us is increasingly security theater. Not just medical.
There’s so, so, so, so, so much I could say about this topic.
Number 1: Why are any of you cunts even coming to the USA anymore? Sincerest apologies for victim blaming, and obviously my stupid ass has not read the article (gonna do that later).
Number 2: US healthcare costs are a scam.
Number 3: Healthcare insurance is a gamified scam.
I think coming to the US to murder Trump is a very valid reason for travel.
The dates are not clear on the article, but it’s possible that the birth was even pre Trump… the couple was touring, they’re musicians.
Other articles date the birth to 2022.
This is the Greatest Country In The World, sunny Jim, and you better thank Republican Jesus for our for-profit system! Otherwise you might be forced into free socialist health care, where you have to get vaccines and stuff for nothing, and only a godless communist wants that. /s
Just don’t pay it.
$200k? did the hospital make the baby?
Sadly that’s low for some cases of births. I’ve heard of people being charged >$1M before insurance (so that number might be BS insurance negotiations, but still)
How’s the US still a country, how do people just put up with it.
Bread and circuses still works.
Around 50 years of near constant propaganda from our media convincing people that the government paying for anything is destructive to the economy and that taxing rich people more that poor people is not fair.
And that Black people will get benefits if we have social programs, and can’t have that.
Hope to die, survive till it happens.
Military Industrial Complex
Part of why medical bills in the US are so high is because if you don’t pay them, they sell the debt to collections at pennies on the dollar.
Which means that the people who do pay the high prices are paying for those who don’t or can’t or won’t.
Stop paying.
Only $200k? They got a deal there.
“Why is no one having babies anymore?”
Gotta be al that avocado toast.
Travel insurance is a scam. I used to pay Allianz for cancellation insurance every trip but the one time I needed to claim it they denied it.
It’s not safe to travel to the US while pregnant or sick, they will take everything from you.
It’s just not safe to travel there ever
I’m certainly not going back until at least 2029. Let MAGA eat itself over the Epstein files and the next president reform the gun laws (as both sides are now talking about it) and then I’ll think about it.
It’s not safe to travel to the US while pregnant or sick, they will take everything from you.
Until Trump they also claimed the baby as US citizen which is dangerous because they demand taxes from their citizens whereever they are on this world.
Aren’t you supposed to avoid air travel during the later stages of pregnancy?
Ferris, who was 33 weeks pregnant with their first child, had been given the all clear for the trip and flight by her midwife and GP.
She was 7 weeks early, that’s easily a good month before she is “recommended not to fly”.
Most travel insurance policies exclude cover once you’re in your third trimester. The article mentioned that they’d be clarifying this in their policy as well.
Insurance policy limits are dictated by profits, not doctors’ recommendations.
Huh…I didn’t know you could cut it that close. I figured it was more like “don’t fly during the 3rd trimester.”
Shows what I know.
I think “during the third trimester” is essentially folk wisdom because who wants to push their luck?
We’ll also historically people weren’t very good at keeping track of when they got pregnant so it was a bit hit and misses to when the baby would be due.
I mean, it’s recommended not to fly and not to have children, because both are causing devastating effects on the climate.
This person seems very irresponsible, in general
My son was born at 24 weeks. Modern NICUs are an absolute marvel. They took this tiny little guy at the cusp of viability to a healthy, happy, normal baby boy over the next three months.
The pricetag for this treatment was half a million dollars. But, fortunately, we were eligible for Medicaid. A sum that would have bankrupted us was neatly covered by the state.
40% of US babies are born on medicad and the BBB just stripped it completely
I was born at 28 weeks 5 decades ago.
$0 .
Very fortunate
Except tax payers now get to send their hard earned money directly to the leeches that work at insurance companies.
No matter if the system works out for individuals with insurance Americans get screwed with the way it is at the moment.
You all need to fight for universal health care so that shit isn’t marked up 5000% so that insurances companies make billions for doing nothing but complicate everything
You all need to fight for universal health care
We’ve been fighting for over a century. It’s a horrifying monster that’s only grown bigger and stronger over time.
Closest anyone has come to slaying the beast is Luigi Mangione and look what happened to him.
private insurance is heavily subsidized by OUR TAXES anyways, but is unvailable or extremely inaccessible to most people. propaganda has convinced the right more than the left that private insurance results in “faster time, appts and guaranteed care” but it does not appear to be in most cases, because insurance can easily nitpick dim/nickle everything of your care(multiple tests, each doctor appointment, what the doctor is doing, who is reading your results,etc)
I’ve been through both experiences with medicaid for one birth and insurance for another which needed NICU support (fucking huge shout-out to the awesome hospital staff that was supportive through it all). The vast differences of the experience is just mind numbing and the stress is through the roof trying to get around all the billing and headaches. I’ve thought of doing a write-up to share the experience but it’s just so much I feel like it would be a whole side project trying to document the whole ordeal over months of anguish.
Ah yes, the United States – Don’t get sick or you will have to fight tooth and nail to get your insurance company to pay for necessary medical care. This is a story heard over and over again stateside. If the U.S. was truly the best place in the world to live, this would simply not happen. As a person who has worked in healthcare in the U.S. for over 15 years, I feel this in my bones. I am glad you could get legal help and have the right outcome based on what you paid for. I would love nothing more than to see everyone who comes to the U.S. receive medical care appropriately – Nobody asks to get sick :(
I don’t think anyone was sick here.
So, your perspective is that pregnant people who have life-threatening medical conditions arising from their pregnancy through no fault of their own should have to pay out-of-pocket? Additionally, in it sounds like you feel that premature births due to life-threatening medical issues that the mother is suffering from and subsequent aftercare for the mother and premature infant should also be paid for out of pocket?
Use condoms.
Not germane. Zurich Insurance Group is not a USian medical insurance company.
I am well aware of that. This couple’s experience was in parallel to what occurs all the time with people who have insurance in the U.S.
Just a stark reminder that all insurance, no matter where you get it from and what country it originates in, is 100% a scam.
That’s just blatantly false. I’m all for hating companies that gouge people to make money, but insurance isn’t inherently a scam. Insurance, when implemented properly, is paying a low regular premium to offset a risk you can’t afford should it hit. I’ve insured my house against burning down, because I can afford to pay a small amount once a month while a fire (while unlikely) would bankrupt me. Most likely, I’ll lose money in the long run by paying for that insurance, but that’s not the point. The point is that I can afford to lose money over a 30-50 year period, but I cannot afford to lose my house at any single point during the next 30-50 years.
Yeah give me that line again after your house actually has burned down and you have to fight tooth and nail to get any money from the insurance company that you’ve been paying to for the last X number of years.
You are aware that the whole basis for my original comment (and follow-up) was that insurance isn’t inherently a scam, right? Any transaction can be turned into a scam if you refuse to hold up your end of the deal, but that doesn’t make the concept of transactions a scam in itself.
My impression is that US insurance companies are particularly bad about not paying up, and thereby scamming people. Luckily, I don’t live in the US, and don’t have any historical precedent that gives me reason to doubt my insurance company would pay up. The problem with insurance (and a lot of other things) in the US is a system that heavily incentivises squeezing consumers at every turn. The problem is not that insurance is an inherently a scam.
The US health care industry is a scam
It’s a nice ideal. Insurance can in theory help smooth out whatever life throws at you. But in the modern world, their incentives are to not
i’ll bet you and all your neighbors 100/mo, your house won’t burn down this month. send payments on time or else. Meanwhile, i lend you your money to pay for your mortgage with interest. have some more Kool-Aid.
Why would I take that when I already have a running bet with my insurance company where I only pay ≈ 20 USD / month?
The whole point here is that I can afford 20 USD/month indefinitely. However, having my house burn down at any point would be absolutely detrimental to my personal economy, to the point of bankrupting me and likely preventing me from being able to afford a new house in the foreseeable future. I’m well aware that in purely economic terms I’m taking a losing bet. The point is that the consequences should the bet strike home are so large that I can’t afford not to take it.
Of course, you could argue that I would be better off saving that money and being “my own insurance”. You would be right, except for the fact that the house burning down is just as likely tomorrow as in 20 years. If I had enough cash to insure myself, I obviously wouldn’t need to take this losing bet, but I don’t.
big insurers have millions of your neighbors paying 20/month. all i know is, ‘the house always wins’. they are swimming in cash. my dad used to sell car insurance. when cards became mandatory, he had an influx of ‘card buyers’. pay one month and get a card. stop paying. because they bet the odds of getting fined for no card were a lot better than odds of getting in a wreck. house wins, sells you ‘uninsured motorist’ coverage. people gamble on many things. insurance is good when you win. they lose when you win so deny, depose … I don’t know the answer. just try to hedge bets and look for ways to break even for all us non-greedy shmoes. i don’t like most insurance co.'s greed. have insurance as required and savings also. i’d never pay for extended warranty on something under $10k. that’s some easy bets for them.
I agree that the house is winning here (as always) and I also hate companies that squeeze us regular people for cash at every opportunity as much as the next person.
My point is that I don’t really see buying e.g. house insurance as a gamble as much as I see it as paying a monthly fee for the peace of mind it gives me to know that I won’t be financially ruined by a house fire or a burglary. It’s not about making money in the long term for me, it’s about mitigating the consequences of highly unlikely but absolutely devastating events.
i’m glad the medical side tries to stay focused on patient care. i’ve a friend in Mexico where they check ability to pay before any treatment begins. she was bleeding out and they waited until after her card was verified before doing anything. lower costs, maybe. One thing that being married to an RN has taught me, the billing department sends insanely inflated bills which are step 1 in their insurance negotiation. I got a bill for over $600,000, I laughed while still in the hospital bed. bill got negotiated down to $150,000. Even if there is a ginormous bill, you can postpone threatened collections by sending them anything, like $10/month. it will reset their billing escalation cycle. debts more than 7 years old will get written off. if all else fails, bankruptcy isn’t all that bad. shuffle assets to trusted family. the amount of money they waste on greedy negotiations far eclipses any actual cost for treatment. don’t stress over the bills. stress kills. let some fat lawyer worry about not getting a new car this year.
I dunno - my ex burned all the skin off his hand once, the first question at the emergency room was “how are you paying?” and we waited there 5 hours before they saw him, during which time it got so much worse he ended up needing more treatment & therapy. No we didn’t have insurance or money back then. They eventually arranged temporary Medicaid for him as he couldn’t work with the hand so burned. Which left us without his income (I had just given birth too) so without much food.
Anyway - this was in the 1990s but I am absolutely sure we had to wait because we could not pay, even though it was an obvious emergency.
some are worse than others. I’ve noticed going to a prompt care is much faster than going to ‘emergency room’. depends a lot on location and how busy they are that day. i haven’t been seen w/o insurance since 70s when i broke my hand in a fight. doubt they ever got paid for that cast.
For most US medical bills the number you see and what the insurance company will actually pay (even to completely settle the bill) are entirely different numbers. Although this isn’t medical insurance per se. I bet they negotiated it down though.
Link?
I’m not going to send you my personal info, but it’s no secret that anyone with US health first gets a bill with a huge number $$ that’s marked THIS IS NOT A BILL, then some weeks later we get another one from the insurance company which shows that number, and then a much smaller number “allowed” by the insurance which then shows as paid by them, then whatever “copay” we might have, usually about $30 with my insurance. Then there’s “your responsibility” which is just the copay if the doctor/hospital is in your insurance network. In that situation the provider has to accept what the insurance allows and no more. If they’re out of network, you may have to pay the difference between the original bill and what the insurance paid. Which can be a lot, so the first thing you should do is request an itemized bill. This will often be lower to start with, and gives you information to negotiate/contest items. Hospitals will also work with you to make a payment plan at that point.
In the OP case it was Swiss travel insurance not US health insurance and they finally agreed to pay the NICU bill, good work by the couple’s lawyer.
thats usually why private services charges something that high, they know insurance is good on paying a percentage of that bill if not most of it.
Priority goes to UK citizenship.
Not sure if TERF Island with a Great Firewall is exactly better
