A picture of a hospital bill was posted on Reddit Monday showing a partial bill for the delivery of a baby on Sept. 4. The total charges exceeded $13,000 before insurance coverage, but that wasn’t the outlandish part.
The parents were charged $39.35 for an item listed as “skin to skin after C-sec.” In other words, a hospital charged parents $40 to hold their newborn baby.
In a comment under the submitted picture, the Reddit user who posted the image clarified that he and the mother were not outraged, but had posted the bill because they thought it was funny.
“The nurse let me hold the baby on my wife’s neck/chest. Even borrowed my camera to take a few pictures for us,” he wrote. “Everyone involved in the process was great, and we had a positive experience. We just got a chuckle out of seeing that on the bill.”
Another user who identified themself as a labor and delivery nurse offered a possible explanation for the charge.
“I didn’t know that hospitals charged for it, but doing ‘skin to skin’ in the operating room requires an additional staff member to be present just to watch the baby,” the user wrote. “We used to take all babies to the nursery once the NICU team made sure everything was okay. ‘Skin to skin’ in the OR is a relatively new thing and requires a second Labor and Delivery RN to come in to the OR and make sure the baby is safe.”
That placated some commenters on the Reddit thread, while others insisted hospital bills in America were “ridiculous.” But everyone seemed to agree that thoroughly checking medical bills is important, either to actually receive lower rates or to share hilarity with the internet.
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