According to my halfassed search engine results, giving birth costs on average $18,000.
Just the cost of epidural, estimates range from $1000 to $3500 out of that cost.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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As someone who lives in a country where giving birth is free that sounds absolutely insane to me. Are these birth costs in the US at least covered by common medical insurance or is it always that bad? It's a miracle that the US birth rate is one of the highest in the western world when the conditions are like this...
After my son’s birth in 2006, we owed $12,000 after insurance. That was a single night’s stay in the hospital. Nothing out of the norm for the birth. We had to refinance the house the following year to pay off his and our daughter’s birth from 2005.
I think my hospital bills were around $5,000. What I didn’t anticipate was the fact that once my daughter was born I was paying hospital bills for me and for her. I think without insurance it was around 30k? So insurance covered 25,000 and we paid the rest
Right? 🇨🇦
But I have family in Sweden, and I'm not sure they don't have a baby food fund, but I definitely remember that daycare, preschool and all schooling was free of user-fees and also nearby.
So she's been walking the kids to the schools down the road a bit for 14 years now, on her way to and from work. And it's been free. And I think they get lunch. And their schools are moderately successful and still have programmes. And they graduate kids who can add in their head and speak two languages or more.
Guys, I think rogue American states don't want to join Canada. Join Denmark or Sweden instead!
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I had a kid three years ago, we decided to get a higher premium health plan that specifically had excellent natal coverage. It's one of the most expensive plans available to us but we didn't pay anything for 9 months worth of prenatal visits plus 3 days in the hospital. The coverage statement said that delivery from the hospital was something like $28,000 but the first bill we actually saw that we had to pay was for a hearing test that was only partially covered.
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Remember the stimulus checks that covered approximately 15 days' worth of rent?
Remember? I'm still living off of mine!
Oh wait, that was just some right wing delusional bullshit that disappeared as quickly as it materialized.
Free daycare and free healthcare for people under 18 are two social services that would only benefit parents. How about free college tuition moving forward?
This is just a sad attempt making an exclusive version of establishment Dem stimulus checks...
Idk, it seems like US doesn't even have the basic shit going on, any of that is a good news.
Additionally, government supplemented/paid for day care is the only way to pay the teachers fairly. Given places often aim for 4 students:1 teacher, you already have a hard cap of 4*monthly fees for salary for that one teacher. I pay 1.2k/ month, so a teacher can get a max of 4.8k/month if EVERYTHING went to them, which we all know it doesn't due to taxes, administrative staff, utilities, facility fees, etc.
However, if they raise fees, they price people out of a much-needed service at a time when folks typically haven't reached their max earning potential yet.
And folks wonder why parents these days are so old. Earning potential to afford daycare in the first place.
We had this in Australia for a while, where there was no hospital costs for birth, and almost 20 years ago, so it was a considerable help. The conservatives started claiming people were having babies just to get the money and then spending it on big TV's and other luxuries.
Which is hilarious because iirc it was a fucking Howard policy
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Why only after the baby is born? Is there something significant about the moment of birth or something?
Yeah, clearly an embryo/fetus is a child with rights at the moment of conception (/s), so why wait until after delivery?
Aye. Try and convict them as an adult and then they're free labor.
Isn’t it like ~$310,000 to raise a kid to 17? That’s, what, 2% of what is needed after the poor child is born? And some woman is going to decide to let a guy nut in her for $5000?
This won't even cover the medical costs to give birth
Even Elon pays better than this
“White babies only please” —Cheetolini
I know you were half joking but for everyone else here complaining that 5k ain't shit (I agree, it's not), it's because the incentive is not for you. It's for rich people (read: rich white people, since poverty disproportionately affects non-white people).
5k might not mean shit to you in trying to raise a child but for someone who already has the means to have/raise a kid, it's actually bonus money. That's the incentive.
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More ineffective Band-Aids.
The core issues never get addressed. Prices keep going up.
And those issues will get worse under a corpo like Trump.
Have 4 kids.
5k is couch money when you have kids. It'll maybe take care of a few months of daycare. Now if you're on gov assistance and make next to nothing? This will be great, but don't expect to get a job or climb out of poverty with 5k. A kid will eat that up super fast.
Are these those welfare babies Republicans always screeeched about?
As an atheist baby-eater, sign me up. I could have a lovely dinner party for $5K on Hallowen every year and not have to find a main course.
That's the only way anyone would financially benefit from this bill. Infanticide. And only if they do a home birth.
I don't think babies are supposed to be profitable.
If you're already gonna have a baby anyway, the 5k is a bonus. Otherwise it won't do much for you.
Completely. And therefore this is an absolutely terrible way to "boost the U.S. population".
Spending money on families hasn't been shown to help in any way whatsoever in increasing the birth rate. You have countries with close to free day care and generous monthly child subsidies with the same or even much lower fertility rate as countries that give just about nothing at all. I still support these kinds of policies just for the sake of helping families and their kids, but doing it for the only purpose of helping the fertility rate is futile. Honestly I don't think the government can do much at all to help the fertility rate. It's a cultural issue first and foremost. And the government can't (and I think shouldn't!) do much to change the culture of our society. You see people living in poverty with 9 kids just because they belong to a certain religious or ethnic group who values children above all else. That's the main issue. How important is children to the culture? Is it prestigious to be a dad or a mom? Is personal success measured in how you've built your family or is success measured in how much money you make?
It's a work culture issue. People need free time to socialise meaningfully. Notice how Iceland and France are as high or higher than Colombia?
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I sometimes joke with my kids and call them Lamborghini 1 and 2, because that's how much money it was suggested you would need for each kid, and I'm sure that has doubled or tripled by now.