Opinion: The staggering financial burden of giving birth — even with insurance
Privately insured families pay on average about $3,000 for maternal and newborn hospitalizations.
The burden of high health care costs and medical debt in the U.S. is no secret. Medical debt affects one in five adults in the U.S., with an average burden of more than $20,000 for each medical debtor. As primary care physicians, we frequently witness the effects of these financial burdens, particularly for our older or sicker patients with expensive medical conditions.
However, new research we published recently in the Journal of General Internal Medicine shows that medical debt is also common in one younger and healthier population: women who have just had a baby.
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