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Couple left with $200k bill after baby born in US
(www.bbc.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Do not travel to the US
why would you go there??? this couple was asking for it
Did you see how they were dressed my god
If i take a boat and sail to a known cannibal island, where people like me have gone and been eaten before, and I then get eaten, there's no one to blame but me. The US is simply not a good place to travel to at this time. It would have been even more hell for them if they had to over stay their visa.
I don’t see how this is the US’ fault. Their insurance, who initially denied them, is with a Zurich company. Do they expect any country they visit to cover them medically?
Maybe I’ll pop over to Berlin if I ever get cancer. Surely they’ll pay for all my treatments even though I’m just a tourist. They aren’t barbarians like the US.
I'm fairly sure in Berlin they won't charge you two hundred thousand fucking dollars for an emergency procedure, but sure, go on strawmanning. What the hell.
Sorry to burst your bubble of USA-hatred but nope. Germany will not decline to treat you but they will bill you. Oh wait… that’s exactly what happened in the US! This was not just an emergency procedure but 3 weeks in the ICU.
This couple’s insurance ultimately decided to pay. So this is a total non story. It would have happened the same in a million places. Tourists do not get major services for free. If they did, people from around the world be showing up with conditions and just reporting straight to the ER and then hop skipping home.
This story was drummed up to tap into people hating on the US for its poor healthcare system. Which is usually valid. But if we judge by whether tourists get free major services, the US isn’t any worse off.
The costs are not comparable, otherwise or healthcare systems would all be bankrupt. And here we don't have the same incentives to inflate costs.
Yes the costs would be different. Perhaps 100,000€ instead of $200,000. The fact remains tourists don’t get free healthcare anywhere.
This is a complete nothingburger of a story. The couple got treatment. Their insurance was billed, exactly as it would have been if they’d been in Canada or Portugal.
Their insurance momentarily denied to cover them. Why aren’t we mad at them? Because this clickbait story was created to stoke a pre-existing “America sucks” narrative and get outrage clicks.
And they seem to have played everyone here perfectly.
Maybe they denied to cover them because of the ridiculously high bill, have you ever thought about that?
Edit: It seems the cost of a normal birth in Germany is at most €7500 for a tourist with no insurance.
Helllllo the baby was 7 weeks premature and in intensive care for 3 weeks. The cost of a normal birth is totally irrelevant. You didn’t read the article, obviously.
I paid literally zero for either of my kids births right here in California.
The problem in this story wasn’t actually the US this time, it was the Swiss insurance company.
I would say the problem also was a very high medical bill of $ 200k.
Yes. You're right. Our healthcare system is absolutely bonkers bananas insane, and that's before you calculate in the cruelty. And as US citizen, I strongly advise everyone who isn't to avoid this country like the plague.
However, if I travel to Switzerland or Canada or Italy or wherever, as a tourist, I am not covered if I go in the hospital. I still need to carry travel insurance, and if I don't, or if it doesn't cover something, then those countries with their modern, sensible healthcare systems will charge me out of pocket, just like an American hospital. The difference is that in America, even the citizens aren't covered by default, and the amounts are astronomical compared to other countries.
It's a shitty system all around, and frankly, I genuinely believe that if it weren't for America's weird fetish for as much money as you can possibly choke on, we would probably have started building an actual universal healthcare system for the global community, so that you're covered by default even when traveling. But like with most things, the right wing nonsense has held us so far back that that is so unlikely as to seem utterly impossible
Yes if you come here to Danmark from the US you will not be covered. But if you are from a country in the EU you will in most cases be covered and don't have to pay anything for being hospitalized.
Even if you do have to pay something, the cost Ive seen people post in europe are in the hundreds/thousands, not hundreds of thousands like the US.
Maybe this couple woukd have gotten a $200/2000 bill in the EU for a birth? $200,000 is a purely US problem.
It's complicated, because it's American healthcare.
The hospital charges $200k. The insurance agrees to pay a negotiated discounted rate of $100k. $75k goes to the various insurance plans of the doctors and hospital. $15k goes to the people providing care and materials costs (everything is itemized, so then $50 aspirin you see is because it includes the time of the pharmacy tech who got the order, entered it into the system and checked for interactions, the tech who filled the order, the pharmacist who had to sign off on it, and the nurse who carried it to the patient.). $10k goes to the hospital as profit.
The insurance then makes the patient pay their $5000 deductible, which is what you pay before the insurance you pay for pays for anything, then the patient pays their $2500 coinsurance, which is what you pay after the insurance you pay for starts to pay for things but they only pay for half. After that the insurance covers it. The "perk" is that having met your deductible and coinsurance costs you likely have to pay little or nothing for care for the rest of the calendar year, making January to most financially responsible time to have a medical emergency.
In terms of actual "cost", I think the biggest difference is the itemization of everything. Universal healthcare is intrinsically more cost efficient, but it still has to pay doctors and nurses. When that cost is viewed as part of the cost of running a hospital as opposed to part of the service "charged" to the patient it can bring the "list price" down a lot. You end up with the price of a broken arm being the cost to treat a broken arm, not then cost to treat a broken arm and have everyone involved show up and your share of building the hospital room, and the cost of the janitor cleaning the room.
Extremely well said, and an extremely sad thing to say, the system that makes you plan your medical emergencies is perfectly balanced, indeed
NICUs are capital and professional labor intensive. I got to meet the team of doctors and nurses who kept my son alive and thriving for the three months between birth and due date. Idk what the magic number to care for him should have been, but I don't think six figures is an unfair estimate in any socio-economic system.
The question after that is "Who paid for it?" And, in my case, it was Medicaid, which was a huge relief. These poor bastards clearly didn't have the option.
Why it's so capital intensive is another issue, but the matter of six figures being reasonable is to compare that to costs of similar treatments in other countries (usually it's an order of magnitude more expensive).
Healthcare just can't be free market bcs the demand side cannot be free by definition.
If I'm going to be paying $200,000 for medical procedures then they better be replacing my liver or something. How could a pregnancy possibly cost that much money?
They probably asked 6 grand just for pulling out a splinter.
They were performing there, it's work .