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Comment by foxfired | Hacker News Reader

The counselors at the hospital told me same thing. The out-of-pocket maximum was set to be $5,000 for the insurance. But they also gave us a ceiling (which I don't remember the exact amount at the moment).

I was advised that to get Medical which, I did right away, and it is supposed to be retroactive.

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Wow that’s crazy! I thought I was down on my luck last year when I got fired while my wife was pregnant. But medicaid has covered 100% of my daughter bills at the hospital. She’s been in the NICU for 8 months now. So even though I make a software engineer’s salary I haven’t had to pay anything. It’s weird that being unemployed saved me from the same hardship as you. I hope it all gets sorted and wish you all the best.

Wishing the best for your daughter and family as well

This is frightening to read. How is this possible? My wife and I have 3 week old fraternal twin girls (wife is a living, breathing superwoman who carried them to full-term, despite being on strict bedrest from 26 weeks due to pre-term labor scare). We haven't gotten the bill yet but we had assumed that we were in the clear at this point because we've already reached the max (many, many months back, in fact).

You will probably get an insane bill. But don't get disheartened. Our plan had an out of pocket max and several different doctors (like anesthesiologists) tried to bill us directly because they were out of network. It took a lot of back and forth and many months but after all was said and done, we didn't pay a dime over the out of pocket maximum. This is apparently par for the course.

For posterity, we received our bill. My wife's antepartum stay (~3 weeks) was almost 2x the cost of the delivery. In total, the bill was just over $100k. Her out of pocket maximum, $3k, covered the entire pregnancy and delivery.

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