People Are Outraged Over The Hospital Bill For A New Mother  

By Mayukh Saha / Truth Theory

Medical charges in the US have long been believed to be exorbitant, even for those with medical insurances. For those without, healthcare is seldom affordable. Recently, a video on TikTok by a new mother served as another reminder as to how broken the healthcare system in America is.

Tiktoker Shannon Mayor, aka @shannonmayor, showed how much she was billed for giving birth to a baby at a hospital. Of course, people were predictably outraged at what they saw.

5 Digits For Giving Birth

At the start of the video, she is seen sitting and stunned. Over her head was a text that said that she just received the hospital bill for the birth of her baby. Then, the camera pans to show the entire bill. The total billed amount paid by her insurance was seen to be a staggering $50,816.02. However, she did not have to pay much personally – only $250. She captioned her post modestly saying that she had not expected the hospital bill to be so much. Here’s the post:

@shannonmayor I wasn’t expecting the total to be that high 😅 #hospitalbirth #fyp #bills ♬ Wii – Mii Channel – Super Guitar Bros

For a lot of people, insurance can be confusing and weird. Moreover, it is highly likely that the bill would have been much less if Mayor was not covered by insurance. But the astronomical number still raises questions because it was not an expensive or critical procedure: she was “just” having a baby. Moreover, if one had to pay anywhere close to that number out of their pockets without insurance they will seldom be able to do so.

Read: Instead Of Spending Money On Advertising, Church Abolishes $10 Million In Medical Debt For Local Residents 

Mayor further explained that the insurance covering her paid for so much since she was lucky enough to have a good plan via her former employer. But approximately only 49% of American citizens actually get health insurance coverage from their workplace.

This did not keep Mayor’s TikTok’s viewers from being outraged at the exorbitant cost associated with giving birth. One commenter wrote that on the one hand, many states forbid abortion but on the other hand they charge this much to give birth. Another argued that people should not even be paying anything, let alone $250, and called America a joke. Take a look at some of the comments when it was shared on Facebook:

A different TikToker had claimed that their baby’s hospital bill was 300k for staying a month at the NICU, because of birth-associated complications. They wrote that they threw away the bill because they were hardly Bill Gates or anyone with the same amount of funds.

The cost associated with giving birth at a hospital is only the first point of a long series of financial struggles that come with having a child. In the United States, particularly, the costs have a tendency of running stepper than other similarly developed countries. Women say that this is a big reason behind the declining birth rate of the country.