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The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

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Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#21

Post by TuringNYC »

lanrh1836 wrote: post #18
gavanwoolery wrote: post #3

I'm having identical twins, classified as high risk. The cost is mind-boggling. I've already paid $7000+ out of pocket, and they have not even been born yet. Costs are mostly related to having to do ultrasounds all the time, and one MRI.

If you knew you would be having a baby one year, wouldn’t it make sense to pay a higher premium for a better plan with a low or 0 deductible? Or does the math still not work out?

1. Not all companies give you such options 2. A lot of the cost is in fine print of things not covered, e.g. during our delivery two of the many many medical personnel were out of network and we ended up paying a huge co-pay for that — but it wasn’t like we could have checked ids for each doctor entering the room etc for insurance acceptance. They entered, they did something, they billed.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#22

Post by TuringNYC »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #8
gavanwoolery wrote: post #3

I'm having identical twins, classified as high risk. The cost is mind-boggling. I've already paid $7000+ out of pocket, and they have not even been born yet. Costs are mostly related to having to do ultrasounds all the time, and one MRI.

What insurance plan can result in $7k out of pocket for unborn children?

I can only speak about NYC but this was a common cost range even with diamond plans from corporations. A lot of it can be fine print and delta balance billing.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#23

Post by tmh79 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
djdidf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It includes rental, not purchasing homes

> It includes rental, not purchasing homes Home prices work their way in through owner-imputed rent, i.e. the rent offset by owning the home. Home purchases include a utilitarian portion (the housing) and a speculative portion (the investment gains). We don’t include the stock market in inflation; we similarly don’t include housing prices beyond the housing utility. Nobody has to purchase a home; everyone needs a pla…

the issue is that in aggregate, this is true, but its a case of Simpsons paradox. Housing price growth in cities exceeds CPI by a large margin, and has pretty consistently since the early aughts. Housing price growth in exurban and rural areas has largely stagnated since 2009. You get a strange issue where the people in top 25 cities are paid well and struggling to pay rent, and people in the bottom 20% of census tracts are paid very poorly if at all, and are also struggling to make rent. Slicing even further, there is a generational component, where young people moving to a new city or out of their house within the same city generally pay more for rents than someone in the older generation for a number of reasons that can basically be summed up as "the small land lord rental market is inefficient and YoY rent growth after occupancy historically has lagged market rate rent growth for people moving in to a vacant unit"

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#24

Post by souprock »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #3

I'm having identical twins, classified as high risk. The cost is mind-boggling. I've already paid $7000+ out of pocket, and they have not even been born yet. Costs are mostly related to having to do ultrasounds all the time, and one MRI.

You didn't say why, which is fine, but I hope there is something more significant than just "twins" and that there is an actual intent to change treatment based on all that testing. If you wouldn't take specific action based on the results, then the exposure is unjustified. Satisfying curiosity is not a proper justification.

See the Chinese ultrasound study. It's a study that is impossible to perform in the USA because it wouldn't pass ethical review. Ultrasounds were proven to cause structural changes in the brain. One can reasonably assume that structural changes are bad.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#25

Post by TuringNYC »

q845712 wrote: post #6

The article points to housing as one of the largest factors of raising a child, and mentions healthcare as well. To my very limited understanding, we calculate inflation from some fixed [per comments below: not entirely fixed] index of consumer goods prices [per comments below: which include some notional aggregate of rent]. Is it possible that instead of saying "The cost of children, housing, healthcare, and educati…

Depending on where you live, the best public schools can often be accessed only by address, and are quite often limited to homes (not apartments). So yes, depending on where you live, housing costs are a big part of child raising costs.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#26

Post by DoubleCribble »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #3

I'm having identical twins, classified as high risk. The cost is mind-boggling. I've already paid $7000+ out of pocket, and they have not even been born yet. Costs are mostly related to having to do ultrasounds all the time, and one MRI.

If your hospital is like many/most of all US hospitals despite only one hospital room, only one set of nurses and doctors, only one mother... you get to pay the full price of delivery charges for each baby!

They should be required to hang a sign outside L&D, "Half a womb still pays for the full room." just so you don't have a(nother) heart attack when the bill arrives in the mail.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#27

Post by pfranz »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #3

I'm having identical twins, classified as high risk. The cost is mind-boggling. I've already paid $7000+ out of pocket, and they have not even been born yet. Costs are mostly related to having to do ultrasounds all the time, and one MRI.

Sadly, it's infeasible to predict costs in the US. When my wife was pregnant I pulled up our insurance's "example pregnancy out of pocket cost* (*not expected to reflect actual costs)" PDF. It showed something like $650 out of pocket for all prenatal and delivery costs. The actual cost ended up being closer to your's.

I called my insurance to ask what I could expect to pay assuming a normal pregnancy after being amazed at the cost already billed. They suggested I a) call my doctor's office and get each billing code for each procedure expected b) call their billing office to get each cost for each c) call my insurance with these numbers and get out of pocket expected costs. I just can't imagine trying to compare costs between multiple hospitals or OBs.

I tracked medical costs fairly closely and noticed things like a quick procedure would get 2 separate coded procedures. Someone I know familiar with medical records said that kind of thing was commonplace. So for a laymen, it seems ridiculous to anticipate costs even for routine things.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#28

Post by namirez »

TuringNYC wrote: post #25
q845712 wrote: post #6

The article points to housing as one of the largest factors of raising a child, and mentions healthcare as well. To my very limited understanding, we calculate inflation from some fixed [per comments below: not entirely fixed] index of consumer goods prices [per comments below: which include some notional aggregate of rent]. Is it possible that instead of saying "The cost of children, housing, healthcare, and educati…

Depending on where you live, the best public schools can often be accessed only by address, and are quite often limited to homes (not apartments). So yes, depending on where you live, housing costs are a big part of child raising costs.

> and are quite often limited to homes (not apartments)

Interesting! I had never heard about this. Do you have a source for it?

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#29

Post by analog31 »

souprock wrote: post #24
gavanwoolery wrote: post #3

I'm having identical twins, classified as high risk. The cost is mind-boggling. I've already paid $7000+ out of pocket, and they have not even been born yet. Costs are mostly related to having to do ultrasounds all the time, and one MRI.

You didn't say why, which is fine, but I hope there is something more significant than just "twins" and that there is an actual intent to change treatment based on all that testing. If you wouldn't take specific action based on the results, then the exposure is unjustified. Satisfying curiosity is not a proper justification. See the Chinese ultrasound study. It's a study that is impossible to perform in the USA becau…

Certain pregnancies are automatically elevated to "at risk" status, and AFAIK twins are one of the check boxes. Another is maternal age.

Re: The cost of raising a child in America has soared (2018)

#30

Post by mensetmanusman »

asark wrote: post #15
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What insurance plan can result in $7k out of pocket for unborn children?

Aside from the high deductible plans mentioned, even a fairly modest one can reach that if you split the pregnancy over two years :-( Yes, folks outside the US, we here in America try to time pregnancies over bullshit details of how our insurance plans work. At least anyone who's thought about it does. Those who haven't get a nasty surprise, and pay (up to) double.

It helps me to think of healthcare costs here as a tax. On average, the US pays a bit higher taxes than the EU with this consideration :)
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