A quick search on the website of my health insurance provider estimated the costs of a vaginal hospital birth at $13,193. The average cost for a cesarean delivery is listed as $18,308. That’s actually a lot less than I would have predicted, but a lot more than I’d like to pay.
Now that I’ve picked a doctor and hospital I called my health insurance provider in the hopes of attaining a better estimate of the cost of child birth. While they couldn’t provide any estimates on the cost of coverage, (they said every hospital, procedure and doctor would have different pricing), they did tell me that I would be responsible for 15% of all expenses and they would cover the other 85%.
The representative I spoke to reviewed my medical history/insurance usage so far this year and let me know that I’ve met the deductible and a small portion of my coinsurance. Based on the information on file she said I should not expect to pay more than $2,140.73 out of pocket.
It just so happens that I have $2,552.42 remaining in my FSA account, which means that our pre-tax estimate this year was right on target. I’ll have a bunch of co-pays and other expenses between now and the time I deliver. I will also have a bunch more after the little one arrives, but I bet the FSA will cover almost all of our medical expenses this year.
I deferred $4,000 into my FSA at the beginning of the year in the hopes that I would get pregnant this year, but of course you just never know. It’s crazy to think that this little miracle happened and that we estimated the total cost of care so perfectly.
That's great that you have that in your FSA!
Congratulations on your baby!
The baby may also have a separate bill from the hospital. I don't know if this is always the case, but it was with our two kids.
Note that the birth of a child is a qualifying event that allows you to change the amount of your FSA allocation (you can only increase it in this case).
The extra money can only be used for expenses incurred after the birth, though. In other words, if you had a 10K bill for open heart surgery 2 months before the birth, you couldn't boost the FSA amount and then use the extra to pay off the bill from the earlier surgery.
I'm not exactly sure if the funds can cover the actually deliver or not. Technically, some of these services would be provided prior to the qualifying event (birth), albeit by mere minutes or hours. If this becomes relevant, you may want to dig.
Sometimes I forget how different things are in Canada vs. the US. You should totally sneak up here and give birth for free!