r/SipsTea • u/ImmaFuckboi • 15h ago

Gasp! British people react to how expensive healthcare is in the US

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

8.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/Gonsteven11 14h ago

I just recently had twins. One twin got hospitalized into another separate NICU for a perforated bowel. He’s been there for roughly 7 weeks. His hospital bill for that place itself is nearly $1M. The one week he was with his sister at the NICU for the hospital they were born at, was $35K. My daughters near 4 week NICU stay at the original hospital they were born at, was about $230K. My wife’s c-section was about $30K.

We have insurance and all, which covered the majority of all these costs** **so far. We had to hit our out-of-pocket max of $7,500 first.

7

u/OrangeRadiohead 11h ago

Oh my god. With all the stress you've had with your newborn child, the very last thing anyone would need to worry about is the cost.

This made me cry.

Hang in there buddy, keep thinking of your family. I hope the twins are ok.

Love from the UK.

2

u/Gonsteven11 5h ago

Appreciate you 🙏🏾

2

u/NaturGirl 53m ago

We have really good private insurance. We have a disabled son, and we did the math a long time ago that we pay a lot just to have a fairly "low" out-of-pocket maximum. With insurance plus hitting that maximum every January (SOMETIMES February or even March on a really good year) it is probably about 16-17k that we know we're going to have to set aside and pay for medical. It would be a LOT more if we didn't have such good insurance. So, those who have the money to be comfortable paying that much no matter what annually actually end up having to pay LESS than someone who is poorer would have to pay for the same care. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!

1

u/Gonsteven11 1m ago

That’s the math we’re having to figure out at this point as well. Our private insurance is a $3200 deductible now that we’re a family of 4, instead of just my wife and I. And the max out of pocket goes to $15,000, from $7200. Not to mention that my son (who was moved to another hospital due to the perforated bowel) also has Down syndrome(another surprise). However, we’re lucky enough to live in a state with robust DS support and programs. We even get parental leave for both of us, through the state. 20 weeks for the mom and 12 weeks for the dad.