Homebirth is Thrifty

Debbie sent me this article today, which is sparking another rant. This baby is making me feisty!

It's nothing new or obvious, but hospital births are expensive. But frankly, it's much more expensive for TJ and I to have this home birth, since my insurance won't cover it. We're paying $2,350 for the midwife versus $20 if we had the baby in the hospital (which includes all of my maternity visits and a hospital stay). In general, a "normal" vaginal hospital delivery costs insurance companies and the uninsured over $7,000, with C-sections running around $16,000. And that doesn't include the cost of the baby's stay and any "necessary" procedures done to them.

So, since times are tough, and insurance premiums are rising, it seems like it'd be a great national effort to bring birth back home - or at least back to natural - with less inductions, less drugs, less use of expensive (yet ineffective) monitoring and procedures. Outcomes are NOT better with all of these things! This has been proven over and over with real, statistical, peer-reviewed research. But doctors make a lot of money off of intervention, and so do hospitals. Who is hurt? Consumers when insurance companies up their premiums, or women who can't get individual insurance because they are of childbearing age - not to speak of the countless women subjected to unnecessary and unwanted procedures or worse, major surgery.

See, even if you aren't into my natural home birth, maybe you can at least be into me reducing your healthcare premiums by taking my business elsewhere!