When my second daughter was born, a perfetly normal pregnancy, healthy birth, it cost us $4500. And that was with insurance.
The doctors doubled billed countless things, included visits from her peaditrician days before she was born and visits from specialists that I never saw. I called them on each and every fraudlent charge. Their response was "oh that's right, your insurance doesn't cover that." Not, "oh that's right, you never saw these people." As soon as I informed them that I had called both my insurance fraud alert line and the state fraud alter line, all those charges disappeared.
On the other hand, my insurance would not cover routine prenatal care without denying it first to see if I would object. I had to get the Rhogam shot, completely routine and yet they refused to cover it. But they covered the second one no questions. In the end, they paid everything that they originally denied, but I had to fight them for every penny. And they raise my premiums by almost $100 in the course of a year.
The insurance companies are greedy to a point that I consider it immoral. They make their money by causing harm to others. Doctors are just as bad in my mind. The only solution I want to see from the govenment however is tort reform and anti-trust laws apply to insurance companies.
The system is messed up alright - I'm facing $1,000's of bills for a recent delivery and associated care for my wife. United Health Care says they won't cover us due to the fact that we're covered by another provider. Even though we're not. So, we're covered but not covered, paying premiums but not recieving benefits. We've been through 3 months of this now and the claims keep getting rejected. What happens when insurance refuses to pay based on trumped up charges? Mind you, it isn't that UHC is saying I'm not covered, it's that they're insisting that another phantom provider should be receiving and paying claims before they do.