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The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

aaronstannard.com

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Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#91

Post by CommenterPerson »

losvedir wrote: post #29

Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading. Presumably, you'd be paying those even if you didn't have the child. That said, the cost of health insurance for a family is pretty outrageous. My premiums are along the same lines as the ones here (although less noticeable since they're paid by my employer).

Had the same reaction when I saw how the 40K was calculated (BTW I strongly believe in Medicare for all to control costs and to pay for civilization. To be paid out of progressive taxes on all income).

If Aaronontheweb had the misfortune of getting seriously sick, required surgery .. he would pay $7,150 for something that could easily cost $100K+++. Saying he's paying premiums just for having a baby really feels like weaselly logic .. so he thinks he or the rest of his family will absolutely never fall sick? What if a cancer diagnosis hits one of you out of the blue (I hope it doesn't, but that's what insurance is for).

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#92

Post by sofixa »

bmandale wrote: post #25

So to summarize: a. you're paying that for health insurance, not for the birth of the child. If you, your wife, your children had any other diseases then those would be covered as well. This is a significant benefit. b. all the systems that subsidize health care for those less well off don't apply because you're wealthy. So you are bearing the full cost of extremely high quality health insurance in a western country.

> So you are bearing the full cost of extremely high quality health insurance in a western country.

Overinflated imaginary cost*

There is no way that a medical consultation of 15 minutes actually cost $32k. Examples like this are aplenty, but only from the US. My favourite one was an itemised bill for birth that included a $1k for skin contact with the newborn.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#93

Post by _-_-__-_-_- »

Please note that this is the natural birth of an otherwise healthy child.

In Canada, provincial healthcare and private insurers have not kept pace with the needs and advancements in the areas of alternative methods of conception (IUI, IVF...). Yes, a naturally born baby wouldn't cost the parent(s) much medically. But, if you cannot have a child naturally, medication and procedures (lab testing, blood testing, artificial insemination...) are only partially covered and the amount corporate or union-backed insurers will pay varies widly by doctor and by patient. A couple struggling to conceive will easily pay 15-40K per child after the first procedure.

Funnily enough, friends who have jobs in the USA, but live in Canada often have better insurance that fully covers all of the costs after the deductible. It ends up costing much less to have IUI or IVF procedures with Canadian doctors using American insurers (of course they will take the money).

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#94

Post by 3D30497420 »

godsinhisheaven wrote: post #76

A lot of this is an issue of insurance no longer being "insurance" in the classical sense. Insurance covers all sorts of things, my HSA pays for all sorts of things that I never would have even considered, and while that sounds great, it helps to drive up costs. It's somewhat counter-intuitive, but if you dropped all government funding of healthcare tomorrow, healthcare plans would get cheaper. It'd also be total cha…

Unfortunately, most of what you suggest would get in the way of many people making a lot of money.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#96

Post by [deleted] »

abigail95 wrote: post #66
AstroBen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of this isn't a big one to bear. I just compared tax rates for a $65k USD income in Australia vs the US. You'd be taxed ~$800 less in Australia.

There's no way that's true - include the employer side payroll taxes. Whether PPP or nominal my napkin math gives me 40% more tax payable in Australia Edit: I'm too dumb to know whether to include superannuation as a tax or not so I'm not sure if I'm right or not.

[deleted]

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#97

Post by a_tartaruga »

hu3 wrote: post #52
okhobb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is forcing you to give birth in a hospital. Rational people do it at home all the time to this day.

> Rational people do it at home all the time to this day. I had to read again 3 times. Are you serious? If there is any complication, you're risking 2 lives.

Home birth is absolutely a rational choice in many cases. The author had a very strong reason to require hospital birth but in scenarios with lower risk it is safer in some respects to avoid the hospital.

It will still cost you 5 - 10k for a good midwife and you'll still want to be insured in case you need to transfer. So it only knocks off 5-10k from the total.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#98

Post by swalberg »

hu3 wrote: post #52
okhobb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is forcing you to give birth in a hospital. Rational people do it at home all the time to this day.

> Rational people do it at home all the time to this day. I had to read again 3 times. Are you serious? If there is any complication, you're risking 2 lives.

Father of 3 here, first two were home births, the third had complications and ended up being a hospital birth. I was initially skeptical for the same reasons but the first meeting with the midwife convinced me that they were taking every precaution and had the training to deal with whatever might come up.

The majority of births are simple if you let them be and the midwives go to great lengths to make sure the conditions are right for a successful event. In the case of our third we hit some conditions leading up to the delivery date that disqualified us for a home birth so we seamlessly transitioned into the hospital system (where the midwife still delivered the baby)

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#99

Post by [deleted] »

emmelaich wrote: post #49

Related: Car Seats as Contraception https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731812 > We estimate that these laws [mandating safety seats] prevented fatalities of 57 children in car crashes in 2017 but reduced total births by 8,000 that year and have decreased the total by 145,000 since 1980.

[deleted]

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#100

Post by BeetleB »

peter422 wrote: post #71
AstroBen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Do you have any evidence of that?

15 out of the top 50 and 4/6 top hospitals in the world are in the US: https://rankings.newsweek.com/worlds-best-hospitals-2025 Again, I’m not saying the health care outcomes are better, or the value is better. I’m saying the hospitals are nicer, the doctors are the best, etc. Perhaps this is the wrong thing to optimize for! But we are getting something.

> 15 out of the top 50 and 4/6 top hospitals in the world are in the US

Outliers do not say much about the overall quality of healthcare in a country. Rather obvious lesson in statistics.

Reminds me of the Russian mathematician who moved to the US after the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of his essays were criticizing American students, but in one essay he was quite frank:

Russians who graduate with math degrees are better than Americans who do so, by a wide margin. However, the average American is better at math because they still get access to some math education in university and do not need to be a top student for admission. Whereas in Russia, if you didn't meet a rather high bar, you simply couldn't get admitted as an engineering/physics/math program, and thus couldn't further your math education (I believe he said the cutoff was even before university).

Country with the top mathematicians, but country with worse math outcomes.

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