Hospital Bill From 1955 Sparks Outrage
Over Childbirth Costs In The US Today
Independent (UK),
by
Chelsea Ritschel
Original Article
Posted By: Ribicon,
8/10/2021 10:45:57 PM
A 1955 hospital bill that revealed it cost less than $60 for a three-night stay to deliver a baby has shocked Americans who have become accustomed to being charged exorbitant amounts for childbirth. Last month, a Reddit user who goes by the username @BinaryPeach uploaded a photo of the hospital bill to the platform, where they revealed that the invoice was from the December 1955 birth of their medical school professor in a Kansas hospital.(Snip)In the photo, the $59.95 bill, which one Reddit user estimated would be equivalent to $600 today, details the costs for services such as room and board and nursing service, which totalled $27,
Reply 1 - Posted by:
columba 8/10/2021 10:50:19 PM (No. 874744)
I have a list of costs at the time of my birth in Oceanside Calf. A private room was $7.00 a day in 1940.
10 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
thewarden 8/10/2021 11:00:56 PM (No. 874748)
1994, San Diego, private Catholic hospital. Our out-of-pocket expenses after insurance, from beginning to end, was $1,300, including regular ob visits, prenatal vitamins (which were Rx only back then), etc. and a C-Section birth, private room (we paid $50 extra per day, worth every penny to avoid sharing a room with an illegal Mexican riding on freebies with their 50 family members coming in to visit!). I kept the bills to show my son. I remember a high school chum bragging at the time that her baby’s birth in London was FREE (she lived there and got knocked up by a British guy), except that she had to wait for whatever nurse was on duty to literally catch her daughter being born, in a ward with 15 other women. Yeah, no, hard pass!
7 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 8/10/2021 11:11:05 PM (No. 874750)
Some years ago my mom found the hospital bill from my brother’s birth...$46 dollars for a four day stay. The doc probably charged $5-$7 for the delivery. OP is correct. There is a diminishing pool of actual tax payers carrying the load on everything....social security, health insurance and almost everything. The tipping point is getting closer and closer to the point where the socialists run out of our money. No problem to the Dems and RINOS. They will just run the printing presses overtime until a loaf of bread costs $1,000.
12 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 8/10/2021 11:25:44 PM (No. 874759)
Back in 2019 was at the ER for a total of 4 hours. Problem cleared up on its own before they started doing anything with me. Main thing they did was refer me to another doctor. Total cost: Over $2800. Healthcare insurance covered a total of $300. WORTHLESS!!! Seriously, don't get sick.
14 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DVC 8/10/2021 11:44:27 PM (No. 874782)
Most of the costs of medical care today are to cover the EXTREMELY expensive insurance on the medical staff, due to insane, greedy lawyers, and then to support the massive staff required to meet government burueaucratic record keeping requirements and the massive, very expensive computer systems to keep track of them.
11 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
texaspast 8/10/2021 11:50:16 PM (No. 874790)
Thanks for posting this. I was born at the end of 1954. I recently found my family's bill (no insurance, of course - who needed it?) per day was $7. My mother stayed a week. Of course my spinster great aunt was a nurse at the same hospital (I have a picture of her holding me in the hospital nursery) earned $50 a week, plus room and board (the hospital had a dormitory for nurses,who were almost all unmarried) Even in 1984 when my son was born the 'cash cost' (meaning they didn't have to mess with insurance filing) was $900. That included EVERYTHING, including OBGYN, anesthesiologist, etc. If you had insurance the cost was much higher. I know, because, not having insurance coverage at the time, I paid it. In the past couple of years there have been billboards on the interstate where our local hospitals have been advertising well-baby births in-hospital for CASH (not insurance) for $1900. How many multiples of that would it have been if insurance had covered it?
9 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
msliberty1937 8/10/2021 11:52:16 PM (No. 874793)
Have to jump in on this: I'm sitting here at age 84 looking at the original statement for my natural, no complications birth in 02/1937 at Rochester Hospital in PA. My healthy mom's stay for 14 days was $82.20. (Fortunately, she saved everything!)
Room $65; lab $3; delivery $5; anesthesia $5; misc $7.20. To this day we can't figure out how our dirt poor parents found the money (and a car to get there) for me to be born in the hospital, in the middle of winter. If I remember at the time my dad made about $16/wk as an iron worker... when there was work to be had.
9 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 8/11/2021 7:46:53 AM (No. 874978)
Back in 55 our money still had value. Today it is damn near worthless. Next stop: Venezuela.
3 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
VegasGrump 8/11/2021 9:20:33 AM (No. 875129)
In January of this year my husband had back surgery to repair a fractured vertebrae. We left the house at 6 am for the hour drive into Houston for the surgery. We were home before noon and the hospital bill was $74,000. It's just nuts.
2 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
MickTurn 8/11/2021 9:30:30 AM (No. 875142)
One of the Biggest SCAMS in Hospitals is that they charge you for 'Equipment' sitting idle, just in case it is needed.
I refused to pay for a 'Crash Cart' (used to restart hearts...) on my bill. They claimed it was needed. I never saw it and had no use of it nor did I need it. When they sent a collection agent to try to get me to pay I sued them for various reasons. They eventually went away.
1 person likes this.
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Non-WHITE "migrants" get free hospital care plus an anchor baby citizen that opens the door to welfare for all, and chain migration for the extended family. People on welfare don't pay a cent either, and in fact get more welfare benefits for every child. The diminished population pays a fortune for "health insurance," and more on top of that to have a child, and the expenses climb from there. All of this is by design, but we're cowed into silence lest someone call us a name.