My sister was on welfare and had a kid around the same time as me. Hers was covered completely by Medicaid.
Mine, because I had a job and health insurance, cost me $20,000. Didn’t finish paying for the kid until her 2nd birthday.
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
My sister was on welfare and had a kid around the same time as me. Hers was covered completely by Medicaid.
Mine, because I had a job and health insurance, cost me $20,000. Didn’t finish paying for the kid until her 2nd birthday.
That's pretty much how it works. Newborns qualify for Medicaid, and low income pregnant women generally do too.
I always wonder what would of happened to my son if I wasn't Canadian. He was not growing properly in the womb which meant many doctors appointments and ultrasounds . And then he was born 3 months premature and spent 3 months in the NICU. I didn't have to pay a cent for any of it .
Have I personally avoided going to the hospital? Absofuckinglutely. Unless I’m in immediate danger of dying I’ll figure it out myself. I’ve superglued more than one nasty cut that probably needed stitches, entirely possible I’ve ignored more than one concussion. Is it smart? Unequivocally and resoundingly not. Do I do it anyway so I can pay my rent? Yep.
I wonder about the effects of having a low grade constant stressor like that. Combine that with at-will employment and gum prevalence and it’s surprising anyone is able to feel secure and get healthy.
Purely anecdotal, since I can only draw from my own personal pool, but I don’t have a single friend or colleague who feels even remotely secure in their life. We’re all one emergency away from bankruptcy.
I’m so sorry. I want more for my neighbours.
Again just a personal opinion but I’m loving the change I’ve been seeing lately. More people seem to be standing up for their fellow man and calling for things like universal healthcare. I’ve never seen this much unionization and union positive thinking in my life. I have hope that this attitude of radical individualism is going away and that people are going to pull together for the benefit of all people, not some.
The effects of having low grade stressor like that, combined with non-federal sick leave nor vacation and predatory corporate labor laws are what you witness in the US every day. Precipitously declining mental health for everyone, reduced social and coping skills. Commonplace violence and rage and incredible rates of anxiety and depression and resultant medication.
I can answer this: my son was born in 1990. We were extremely poor.
We had midwives help us out as best they could, to the tune of about $3200 at the time. The birth got complicated due to a variety of health factors, and both my son and wife almost died (not because of the midwives). Luckily the midwives had a direct line to Georgetown Hospital, and the cesarean was done there. The total hospital bill was $58,000, or $138k in today's money, although hospital costs have rose much higher vs inflation, so maybe it would be in the $200k range now. She was in the ICU for a week, hospital for another week, our son for about 3 weeks.
My wife job didn't have health insurance, because it wasn't required back then. Because she was gone a week, her job fired her for an unexcused absence. Oddly enough, this made her unemployed and Washington DC had some law (or rule or something) that immediately dropped the hospital bills because of her unemployment. In the end, we had to pay $15k to about two dozen practices who individually sued us, which took 7 years to pay off and a lot of court visits and wage garnishments. It financially ruined us, pretty much. Both suffered a lot afterwards because we just couldn't afford minimal care. It was hellish. I can't imagine how much worse it would be today. We got evicted from our apartment, and lived in government housing for six years.
So, yeah. Don't have a baby in America unless you can guarantee it will be healthy and you have a lot of money. Most of my friends don't have kids, they simply can't afford it and look at it like the previous generation looked at concepts like summer homes and yachts. Nice luxuries, but way out of affordabilty.
Wow. That's horrible. The US health system sounds like a dystopian nightmare.
And yet so many Canadians seem to want to dive head first in to a fully private healthcare system as if anyone could take that financial hit.
Ah... In short.. Insurance covers a portion of it and whatever insurance doesn't pay, I just... Simply don't pay it. It goes to collections and they spam call me and I don't answer my phone. Suddenly they give up and after 7 years, it's gone. Is it right? I don't know. I definitely haven't devoted half of my paycheck to medical bills though.
Does that bork your credit?
Yes it does
That seems like an unfair and inescapable conundrum.
"Should've thought of that before you had kids while poor" -Republicans
"if you thought about it though and decided not to, too bad, we've decided for you that you must go through with it"
-Also Republicans
Do people ever avoid hospital visits
At least in my experience, we’ll generally be able to go to the hospital
Do hospitals put people on a payment plan
Generally, I’ve just seen the debt transferred to a debt collection agency afterwards, since there’s no money for them to take. They’ll harass you, and it affects your credit score, but they can’t send you to jail
Credit score? Is it like the Chinese social credit system?
Yeah, just the American version
It affects where you can rent housing, what houses you can buy, whether you can get a car, etc
Love how everyone went insane with the social credit score while you got the same shit done to you and no one batted an eye
US credit score won't get you sent to jail or a re-education camp, at least. At least, not yet.
If you are poor enough you can qualify for Medicaid (MediCal in California) which is a sort of limited health insurance. This is life saving for poorer families and most of the time completely covers birth costs. After birth in some states they even offer follow up plans from nurses for assistance with food and meal plans for babies and toddlers.
Even if you don't qualify you can apply for financial aid which I believe is required to be offered in every public hospital even to people whether citizens or not. If not you can just take on the debt and not pay, which destroys your credit score but after long enough you might be offered a favorable financing or a discount... Only after being harassed by collections for months if not years.
Source: not American but I've worked with American healthcare workers interpreting for Spanish.
They send the infant to debtors prison to begin working off the $70,000 hospital bill. They don't have to pay the infant minimum wage though, and they charge them for room and board and meals, so by the time they're 18 they are actually indebted to the hospital an average of 1.4 million dollars, which they will then begin working off as adults earning minimum wage.
I man you joke, but don’t give them any ideas.
American hospitals cannot legally refuse to treat you even if they know you can't pay/don't have insurance. So worst case scenario is you go and have whatever done and they bill you and you don't pay and it's a write off for the hospital.
Often times, if you can't pay they will offer a reduced amount to at least get something out of you if they know they won't get anything otherwise.
Was poor, had a baby at 20. $6,000 hospital bill we paid in monthly installments of like $100
Paid off my kid being born when she was like 6 or 7 lol. Kind of like a car
Some people give birth in their own homes like in medival times. I know people who have done it. In my opinion people shouldn't be having kids if society is so broken you have to do stuff like this but to each their own.
Mine were born at home with a midwife who did sliding scale pricing (charged based on your income). Only available to low risk women who lived close to the hospital though.
If you are quite poor, Medicaid will cover pregnancy and hospital birth expenses, even if you don't otherwise qualify. I know someone who did that and said the nurse yelled at her because she wasn't married.
As a poor Florida resident who grew up and has known several people giving birth in poverty; if you're lucky you qualify for WIC (women, infants, and children) which is essentially food stamps/ welfare for pregnant women and mothers. That covers food. If you qualify for WIC then you're also eligible for Medicaid which is the US' version of free* healthcare for people in poverty. That will cover pre and post natal care for the mother and baby. The baby is usually covered until they're ~6. Unless you're still poor by then, in which case it usually covers the child to adulthood or until their parents no longer qualify for Medicaid. Note that none of this covers diapers, clothes, or other necessities for the infant. Just food and drs visits. If you're poor, but on the [benefits cliff](https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs#:~:text=Benefits%20cliffs%20(the%20%E2%80%9Ccliff%20effect,a%20small%20increase%20in%20earnings.) you can get fucked lol. Murica
Debt. Massive amounts of debt.
Bankruptcy.
My first kid was born at 27 weeks, and would have ended up costing us 3mill if they weren't on Medicaid due to being born so early. My second kid we were living in Canada (due to my job) and basically only cost us to park at the hospital.
Growing up in the US and living in Canada for a while, I genuinely don't understand why Universal Healthcare isn't fought for more. I know it's talked about but holy fuck, it's so much better in Canada.
To comment on OP's actual question, I have no idea how people do it.
My son was premature and racked up 14 days in the NICU. The hospital (which is 'legally a charity' billed $250,000.00. We were low-income with no employer-provided medical insurance, so the state Medicare provider got to pay a reduced rate of that.
Once there's a kid in the equation then it's pretty easy to get on state paid insurance. It's even easier now with so called Obamacare in the equation (Affordable Care Act). If you qualify, then you'll have free neonatal care, free gyno visits, and free delivery and hospital services. It's not great insurance, like you'll be at the community hospital and not some swanky private birthing center, but it's not bad either. Medi-Cal, the California state insurance is actually pretty good for child care and birthing services. They pay for hearing aids too, which only 3% of private insurances pay for. So medical care when you're poor and have a kid is decent in the States. Now that there's Obamacare it's decent even without a kid. Where it falls short is if you're under-insured as a middle class citizen, and it's pretty easy to be uninsured, even with expensive plans.