This woman here had a child that was born prematurely. That child spent a month in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The bill came to $738,360, and the mother complains that the cost is too high. There are many in the comments that agree, and it’s filled with comments about how other countries have free healthcare, which is of course false.
The bill for that child’s care is completely reasonable. Let me explain why:
Nurses work 3, 12 hour shifts per week, and NICU nurses are frequently on 1:1 care, meaning one nurse to one patient. A 30 day stay in the NICU means that your child had the undivided attention of 5 nurses for a month. An experienced nurse, (for obvious reasons NICU nurses tend to be fairly experienced, qualified, competent, and educated) aren’t cheap. The average pay for a NICU nurse in the US is about $130,000 a year. Night shift makes even more, thanks to shift differentials.
The nurses in charge of your child’s care cost the hospital $70,000 in direct compensation, plus the costs of insurance, training, and other HR expenses. In all, just the nursing care for that month in the hospital cost that hospital about $140,000. Now add in the costs of everyone involved in that from the doctors to the lab technicians, and even the janitors.
Each of those people is highly educated, even the janitor. Yes, the janitor. To comply with Federal law, that janitor has to be instructed on CPR, stroke procedures, HIPAA compliance, Medicare and Medicaid laws, sex trafficking, recognizing child abuse, disposing of medical waste, and a host of other laws. He also needs to be background and possibly drug checked, especially to work in a pediatric wing. All of this raises the cost of hiring that janitor.
Back to the nurses. It takes 3 years of schooling to become a registered nurse. Then it takes years of experience, training, and work to specialize as a NICU nurse. In all, the average NICU nurse has been a nurse for 5 years or more and has attended far more schooling than a beginning nurse. Pediatrics is a specialty. So is neonatology, as is critical care. NICU nurses have to certify as all three. That’s why they make what they make- competence costs money.
Then there is the lab work, the cost of provider that supervises those NICU nurses (usually a nurse practitioner), lab technicians, respiratory therapists, medications, medical equipment, supplies, meals, and even the guy that empties the trash. Then there are the doctors, as well as the regulatory costs of compliance.
In total, labor costs alone for that stay were probably in the neighborhood of $300,000, so I don’t think $700k is out of line once you do the math.
That isn’t even considering what procedures may have been done- if surgery was involved, you can also add anesthesia, scrub nurses, surgical nurses, and a host of other specialties and specialized equipment.
The argument that other countries offer free healthcare is false. The care isn’t free, it is paid for through taxes. Even then, there aren’t enough professionals to go around, so care is rationed, and even Canada offers to kill the patient, putting them down like a race horse with a broken leg once the cost of their care gets too expensive.
There are ways to make this sort of care cheaper, but every one of those ways involves compromising the level of care. You can increase the nurse to patient ratio, but this means that the patient is left to fend for themselves for longer periods of time. You can get away with that for an adult admitted with a broken hip, but not for an infant that is near death.
Americans demand perfect healthcare, but then complain when the bill comes due. You want good care, and you want it now? Then it won’t be cheap.
