The typical cost for a vaginal delivery without complications is $9,000 to $17,000 in the U.S., depending on geographic location, and whether there is a discount for uninsured patients. A Caesarean section runs $14,000 to $25,000. The baby usually gets a separate bill: $1,500 to $4,000 for a healthy full-term baby.
Tucson Medical Center (TMC) in Tucson, Arizona, however, offers a special package—and it’s not for a drive-by delivery. The cost is $2,300 for a normal delivery with a two-day hospital stay, and $4,600 for an uncomplicated Caesarean section with a four-day stay. Included are exams for the newborn, and a massage for the mother. The childbirth package is one of a number of pre-paid deals offered to affluent Mexican nationals who like the amenities of American medical care—as well as to other self-paying patients.
“These are families with a lot of money, and some (women) arrive on private jets,” said Shawn Page, TMC’s administrator of international services and relations (Mariana Alvarado, Arizona Daily Star 6/21/09).
The practice of wealthy Mexican women coming to the U.S. to give birth has gone on for generations, and occurs at all Tucson hospitals. TMC is said to be the only one actively soliciting this business. While legal, it offends advocates of tougher immigration standards, because babies born here automatically receive U.S. citizenship. The automatic citizenship is a feature of U.S. federal law, and hospitals are required by the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to provide maternity services to illegal aliens who just walk in and do not pay.
The newspaper story garnered more than 180 reader comments, many expressing anger about “anchor babies.”
But one commenter asked a key question: “It costs less than 5,000 for a C-section? If it’s that cheap why do people even worry about getting insurance?”
The prices quoted for the package deals do not include fees for the anesthesiologist, surgeon, or physicians who interpret tests.
“Packages are offered to self-pay patients only, not to patients covered by insurance. To receive package program rates, full payments must be received before services are performed, otherwise full charges will be billed.”
Additional information:
- An ambulatory surgery facility posts prices: www.surgerycenterok.com
near term mothers should not be allowed into the USA
we have a border patrol
problem solved>
It is amusing to note how many forget that all of us are the children of immigrants. The current xenophobia is just another knee-jerk, tabloid response to fear, stress and anxiety. The solution to the immigrant issue with Mexico is to help that nation restore its economic and social stability. That will not happen until the illegal drug business (currently well over 40% of the GNP of Mexico) is put out of business. That will only happen when the US decriminalizes drugs. Then we can settle down to identifying and treating the small percentage of drug users who have addictive disorders.
Mexican nationals illegally enter the US because they have no ecomonic alternatives. You can build a wall 15 feet tall and they will still get in, if the alternative is starvation. So here we are, trying to interdict human beings. Just like interdicting drugs – the “supply side” strategy is and will always be, a calamitous failure.
We need rationality instead of emotionality. It makes for better, and more successful, planning.
Hospitals’ practice of widely varying facility charges has wreaked havoc at the marketplace. AAPS has a White Paper on this very topic. Why should not these hospitals, most of which are supposedly “non-profit”, function like supermarkets, charging one fair price to everybody? By artificially manipulating hospital pricing, are not hospitals forcing both patients and physicians into subservience to the large managed care companies and hospitals? With fair hospital pricing, medical insurance would not be necessary for many people. We hear the constant outcry for the “uninsured”, when, in fact, we should all be self-insured. I never have quite figured out why all physicians aren’t self-insured. If we cannot take care of each other, we are in deep trouble. It would also encourage physicians to speak out against the overcharging of hospitals!
Thank you for a very informative item of immediate practical use by many – at least a great number in Arizona or willing to travel there.
Following the link to Tucson Medical Center’s (TMC’s) website regarding their Prepayment Package Programs, I was pleased to see that bone density exams (DEXA) are only $200! This is considerably less than the $642 I was quoted twice in the past year by Desert Reflections Imaging Center, the outpatient radiology facility affiliated with Casa Grande Regional Medical Center (CGRMC), less than 100 miles north of Tucson. Even with the 20% discount CGRMC will give for a self-pay patient and the addition of the radiologists separate bill, the $200 TMC charge (required 2 weeks ahead) plus their radiologist fee is $213.60 less. I am assuming that the radiologists’ fees would be approximately the same.
While there is also the cost involved in making the approximate 90 minute drive to Tucson from Casa Grande, I will further investigate this pre-packaged plan at TMC when we return to Arizona, my legal residence, in November. I last had a bone density scan done in Toronto in 2002 when husband Paul’s legal residence was there instead of in rural Ontario 3 hours away, where we are now. My results at that time, when 57 was a T score at L2-L4 of 0.8 and 1.8 at the femur neck – average for age 20-48 on the first and average for age 20 on the second. (The fee was only a bit less than what TMC is now charging prepaid.) I take measures to prevent osteopenia and have no outward indications of any, so I’ve not been in any hurry to pay the price at the local facility since I am a self-paying individual (not covered by any medical insurance). However this information provides me with a cost effective option – and we can always combine the drive to Tucson for the DEXA with our major grocery shopping at the branches of our favorite stores there rather than Chandler and Tempe :>)
Lastly, I suspect that since TMC can afford to have these prepaid arrangements, that CGRMC could do so also – and most (?all?) other hospitals. It seems to me that the cost savings involved with not having to deal with insurance companies can go much further than this – and even to procedures that are not elective in nature. And most important, being self-insured (or only with a very high deductible, if such a policy can be obtained at a reasonable price) can be highly cost effective to the individual who strongly practices health degeneration prevention.
Definitely a no brainer unfair practice to the taxpayors and US citizens with many negative implications on the economics of this country!!!!
TMC is not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem. It actively solicits pregnant Mexicans to come to this country in order to make a few bucks and facilitate “anchor babies.” These non-emergency, Emergency-Medical-Treatment-and-Active-Labor-Act deliveries provide citizenship as a bonus. What a deal–for just $2300! Why not? American citizenship is worthless and we really should just give it away to all those who can get here by hook or by crook— after all we are obviously loaded with money, and, 300 million people is just not enough to populate this country and we need more and more people on the welfare roles to turn this into a 3rd world banana republic. We need to do this so that we won’t be considered racist xenophobic Nazis as Dr. Hochman implies, even though more sane countries that want to survive and have a modicum of national pride put restrictions on who can be given the honor of being a citizen of their country. (America has allowed the MOST legal immigrants into our sovereign nation than any other country on Earth–yet WE are “xenophobic” per the “knee-jerk” responses of jerks who want open borders.) I also didn’t realize that Mexico was allowing it’s people to STARVE (according to Dr. Hochman), and yet TMC can apparently solicit so-called “wealthy” Mexican women (? the progeny of drug lords) to ‘jet’ to the U.S., Mexico owns a huge oil field and has the richest man in the world as one of their own. DO YOU THINK MAYBE THE PROBLEM COULD BE CORRUPTION/INCOMPETENCE/STUPIDITY BY THEIR GOVERNMENT and a cultural/educational legacy that perpetuates a 2 class social system of the very wealthy and the very poor? The Hispanics are not assimilating in our country (i.e, press “1″ for English, bilingual everything and Hospital and Government forms in Spanish). The Mexicans persist in their own culture and language and loyalty to Mexico as dual citizens. As the largest minority in this country, they helped vote in Obama and they don’t give a wit about our founding principles and despise our European founders. They are bitter and hostile (La Raza) to the U.S. because we “stole” their land from them and THEY want it back, BUT the taxpayers are FORCED to provide for illegals and their anchor babies. The Mexicans just can’t help themselves but re-create the failed economy in our country to reflect the one that they left. This is the price you pay when you don’t have national pride, when you lose your identity as a nation by losing your culture/language and by promoting multicultural divisiveness instead of our traditional ‘melting pot’…you lose your country.
TMC is generating free-market revenue from outside the US to sell its goods and services. And it is doing so without taxpayer support. This is real economic stimulus: bringing new dollars into the US, not merely moving bucks from taxpayer to panhandler and calling it ’stimulus’.
Bravo!