Our sweet baby. Our expensive baby.
She’s the first baby we had without the magical medicaid medical coverage, and boy are we feeling it, right in the middle of our savings account. Actually, more like right in the bottom of our savings account.
We have a very good health insurance plan through Jeff’s employer, with great coverage. My individual deductible is $4100. We maxed that out in like the second week of my pregnancy, so we thought we were safe from any surprises. Right when we thought we had received all of the baby bills, however, WHAM they plunked another fat one in our mailbox yesterday. It turns out that once the baby is born, she counts as a separate person with a separate deductible, which started ticking away in the hospital.
It cost me, an adult, $4,000 just for hospital room and board when I had Amber. They charged an extra $3200 for a healthy baby to lay in my hospital bed with me for two days. WHAT? I am very grateful for insurance that paid for about 94% of these sky-high medical bills. It makes me feel lame for complaining about the 6% or so that we did have to pay. Thankfully we will squeak by and pay all the bills. Amber is completely worth it all and more, of course.
The insurance statements were fascinating and eye-opening and intense and slightly humorous, all at once. For fun, I kept a spreadsheet with a running tally of each insurance statement with one column for what we paid and one column for what the insurance company paid:
Clearly, Premera paid FAR more than we did. But $5,576.84 is still a lot of money. Our savings account is crippled! Decimated! (word inspiration credit: Helen) Three years ago we bought a house (well, we paid a down payment on a house). Two years ago we bought a new central air unit. Last year we bought a baby. This year I think we’ll rehab our savings and not buy anything.
All these big expensive numbers made me think that Amber must literally be worth her weight in gold, so I did a little research…
A mathematical interlude, for fun:
Amber was 7 pounds 9 ounces when she was born. That’s 121 ounces. Out of curiosity I peeked at the current gold rates and amber (amber as in fossilized resin from prehistoric trees) prices online. Currently, gold is about $1,200 per ounce, and amber is about $425 per ounce.
$1200 x 121 oz =$145,200
$425 x 121 oz = $51,425
The total cost of bringing Amber into this world = $87,942.86.
So, technically speaking, Amber is worth more than her weight in amber, but less than her weight in gold. The funny thing about gold and amber prices, however, is that they vary greatly based on the quality and purity of the piece.
I’d say that the quality and purity of our sweet baby Amber make her priceless.
2 comments:
This is my favorite post! You are so funny. We have had a few different insurances over the years but had a total bill similar to yours with Sydney. When we drive by the hospital where she was born we still laugh about how expensive she was. Now that she is two and our account has recovered a little! Amber is so sweet!
I know it's frustrating to keep getting bill after bill for Amber. Maybe think of it as paying for birthing all your babies since the first 2 were free?? We paid almost as much for Henry so I feel your pain. Good news though: you're both healthy and (still) here! So yaaaTOTALLYWORTHITaaaaaay!!!
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