A woman on TikTok is exposing just how brutal the American health care system can be on the average family. In a TikTok video, she shared the bill she received after her infant daughter’s stay in the NICU. The bill is incredibly high, and the new mom shared her dismay at how expensive it is to give birth.
After she shared the bill, people outside of the United States were also shocked at the cost of giving birth. And the woman is continuing to point out how insurance doesn’t always help, even though we pay for it.
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New mom Janice Hernandez, who goes by the TikTok handle @janiceheartss, shared her rant on the app a week ago. Her daughter was diagnosed with Prader-Willi syndrome, leading to a lengthy and expensive hospital stay.
“I just got the bill for my daughter’s NICU stay. Do you guys want to know how much it is?” the bewildered woman asks. “Do you want to converse, have a conversation about the price?”
She pulls out an itemized copy of the bill, showing the final total. “$738,360 freaking dollars. Almost a million dollars,” she reveals.
@janiceheartss Anyone actually pay their medical debt ooooorrrrrrrrr??? #nicumama #nicubaby #nicuwarrior ♬ original sound – Janice✨ | FTM X PUMPING 🐮
The woman says in the clip that she “decided to take a look through the itemized bill because they sent every single little thing that they charged for and I swear there’s things that they didn’t do and I swear there’s things that they’re overcharging for.”
She goes on to give an example about a “little tiny bit of Aquaphor that they gave me that I actually still have – $25 for a tiny tube of Aquaphor that I thought the nurse was just giving me to be cute and give it for free. No ma’am!
“They made sure to charge for every little tiny thing, damn! Like that’s crazy,” she adds.
People were truly shocked by what the woman exposed, writing comments like “How on earth do people pay these massive costs? What happens if you need medical care but have no insurance? Do you just not get treated?”
“As a Canadian I genuinely can not understand this,” another person wrote.
“America’s health system is insane… wym $700k I could build a hospital with that money bro,” another comment read.
“American medical care it is a joke,” someone else shared.
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Hernandez spoke with Newsweek about her viral video, telling the magazine that her daughter is insured through her husband’s job, but she doesn’t have a job. Unfortunately, the family does not qualify for Medicaid; her husband makes $100 over the poverty limit.
“I haven’t heard back from insurance yet but, the deductible we have to meet before it being free is around $5,000, meaning I’ll have to eventually pay her deductible before getting free care,” the woman explained.
The mom also told the magazine that she’s racked up “insane amounts of debt” paying for her prenatal doctor’s appointments with high-risk doctors and her daughter’s current appointments. She revealed that she’s paying for those appointments using credit.
She also shared that she had no idea just how expensive the NICU stay was going to be. The woman said her daughter’s room was changed three times, costing a total of $31,800.
“This reflects how flawed our health-care system is in the US,” she said. “There are so many people who need care and because they can’t pay the price for it, they end up dying. It happens way too often.
“Imagine the thousands of Americans who like me aren’t employed and don’t get to have insurance,” she reminded Newsweek. “They’re expected to pay out of pocket. And if they can’t meet their payments, the hospitals and collections do whatever with their info and debt.”
