If you lose your job you can continue paying for your same healthcare until you find another job or switch providers. It doesn't just stop the day you leave your place of employment.

Congrats on the baby. :)

Cedars is great (I had my back surgery their last year) but they charge a fortune my 2 day hospital stay was $79000. Thankfully some of it covered by insurance but not all.


I agree with ADG...call the billing dept and see if you can get them down in price.

Congrats, NICU is well worth every penny. They do wonders.

congrats :thumbsup

in america if you don't pay your bill do they take your baby?

healthcare in canada is not free. Not sure why that myth perpetuates. There is one insurance coverage for everyone , your fee is based on your net income. Coverage is probably free for welfare people like it is in usa.

As far as quality, each field is going to have its up's and downs, but for the most part common sense says quality doctors make alot more money in usa so alot of canadian doctors move there, that has to influence quality.

Congrats man!

160k ouch

Congrats on the new bambino.

My girls daughter was born premature and weighed 3 pounds. They took care of her for 6 weeks at Children's hospital in Vancouver. The max we pay in Canada for health care is $54 a month.
It cost her $81 for the 6 weeks

the sad thing is most people would either have to claim bankruptsy or turn to crime when receiving a bill like this.

congrats on the kid!

ivf is not covered as far as i know. any waiting list would not be due to the horrible health care system canada has that you always love to complain about.

Huge Congrats.. I know I will and do anything for my son.. He is totally amazing.

Thank you Shapster, yeah when she was born I remember how I felt and it brought me back to how you said having your son was "magic". It feels very fulfilling to be part of the cycle of life.

Congrats man, my baby was in the nicu for 8 days too, she was born a month early.
But every second we spend with her is priceless, she brings so much joy to us. Keep up the good work.

Doctors make enough money in the western world, they don't need to leave everything behind to make a little more, their living standard is pretty high. Too bad they can't enjoy it, since they work most of the time.

While i want to congratulate you on your newborn... Congrats!!!

I am still left boggled as to how you are not completely pissed and let down with the system. I myself when i was born had lung issues. They exceeded that of your newborn it sound slike and my birthing bill was nowhere near that.

You sir are getting fucked and your saying its ok simply because they helped birth your baby. You should demand a full invoice as to why it cost 160k for 2 days.

OUTRAGEOUS!

Congrats on the beautifull baby.
I would let the bills keep coming keep laughing , then negotiate them in half.
If your wife was an illegal alien having a baby in the USA its like winning the lottery, but if you have a job they bend you over the barrel.
Regardless now is a time to celebrate.

Money's just money - congrats.

The insurance premiums have almost nothing to do with the actual costs of the Canadian medical system. Keeping all of these social programs afloat requires a huge amount of revenue, and is the main reason everything in Canada is much more expensive than the USA.

If you are middle to upper class in Canada, you probably pay at least half of your income out in Income Taxes, Consumption and Sales Taxes, and hidden Duties on just about everything.

So correct, it is very very far from being free.

An interesting exercise would be to amortize the OP's $160k bill over 10 years and see if the $16k per year is what would be made up in additional taxation if he were Canadian.

No the IVF procedure itself is not covered. But in our situation we could not even get a diagnosis in Canada. We had 3 very time constrained Urologists who basically diagnosed us on probability alone with 3 different answers. We had to wait for bookings for ultrasounds and other tests that we eventually got all in a timely fashion elsewhere for cash. The time from an initial interview with a Urologist, then an ultrasound and return evaluation appointment was 3 months at home. We had enough and just took matters into our own hands and have been blessed as well with a baby girl.

Your experience may differ...

That might work if that were his one and only hospital experience for himself and his family for the rest of their lives...

yes, you would

congrats!

160k bill HOLY SHIT!!

I think Americans need to rethink their insane medical system.

Congrats on the now healthy baby :thumbsup

We were merely dating when she found out she was pregers. Had we been married I would have made sure we were covered for maternity. Insurance DID cover some of it though.

Congrats! Cuteness...

Damn, humans are expensive. Didn't know it was so much to do a natural thing like procreate.

Can't wait till they tax us on carbon, a naturally occurring element in the atmosphere.

[IMG]http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh102/*******photo/DSC00141.jpg[/IMG]

Why don't you have a shirt on, were you breast feeding your baby? :1orglaugh

Shut the fuck up, mate.

congrats on the baby... sorry about that bill... make sure to beef up the insurance before you guys get pregnant again!

god i hope america fixes their fucked up system.

160K for two days. um, wow. cute kid.

congrats
hope you and mom and also baby are doing well.
Ruben

Was she uninsured before your marriage?

God/Jesus bless America, huh?

The evening prior we both broke down because she had been in the NICU for 7 days and we wanted desperately to bring her home so she would be out of that place. Hospitals kill lots of people and babies due to all the germs floating around. A nurse suggested we do skin to skin contact because it is stimulating to both parents and baby. It worked and within a few days of doing this several times a day she got so much stronger and was released 2 days later. Greys anatomy did a show about this recently where a baby was expected to die but a doctor took his shirt off and held the baby for a few days and saved her life. Yes I understand it was a scripted TV show but it was based on what really goes on in NICUs.

that's a really cool story, glad everything worked out for the best :)

Agree 100%

Congratulations! :thumbsup

Sagi.....she has always been insured.

Congrats!

Holly... the us health care is f***** up, Anyway, congrats!!!! Your baby is the most important now!!! I wish her all the best! :)

congart to you

Congrats!

Just be happy for the couple and baby and dont make this about what country you live it.

FFS

Take a look at this list please: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...mortality_rate

I am from Slovenia. We have what you call social health care. Even if you are unemployed homeless your health care is always free. See how higher we are on the list if you compare to US? Our health system is far from perfect, but it appears to be better than yours where people with no money simply die.

$160.000 to have a baby is just crazy.

Congrats on your beautiful baby

" Infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of newborns dying under a year of age divided by the number of live births during the year times 1000. The infant mortality rate is also called the infant death rate. It is the number of deaths that occur in the first year of life for 1000 live births. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality

Infant mortality has a lot to do with health care.


Anyway congrats on your new baby. That bill is insane but compared to the life that's not important. I had a similar situation although much much worse as far as what the bill would have been but luckily it was all covered.

If you had half a clue you'd know why they put new borns on both parents bare chests :2 cents:

Congratulations on the arrival of your beautiful daughter.

Too bad you're part of a "health care for profit" situation though.

Congrats on the new addition

120k is reasonable to you?

No it's not and there is not a single "fact" that you can find anywhere that will prove that point. Obviously health care here is better then many places but calling it the best in any way is pretty absurd especially when you consider that we pay more then any other nation.

LOL, cobra is a bad fucking joke. Rarely can anyone between jobs afford to make cobra payments for even a few months. For most people cobra costs more then their mortgage payment.

That's funny to you? It's called skin to skin contact it's what you do when you have a premature baby.

America is the land of the free, as long as you can pay!

Why? I have no clue about kids.

congratulations on the new born

160k is outrageous. Who was the doctor? M.D. House?!

Congrats