Baby dies in childbirth. Parents not allowed to take body home.

To be fair, what happens in the States is neither here nor there when we’re talking about people from Western Europe.

You can't get treated In The states without insurance.

See:

The Emergency Medical and Treatment Labor Act (EMTLA) passed by Congress in 1986 explicitly forbids the denial of care to indigent or uninsured patients based on a lack of ability to pay.

Private facilities can refuse service, Medicare compliant facilities can't. We pay 7.65% out of every paycheck to support FICA.

FICA makes up the following taxes:

6.2 percent Social Security tax;
1.45 percent Medicare tax; and
As of 2013, additional 0.9 percent Medicare surtax for employees earning over $200K

Employer matches 7.65% for a total of 15.3% of every payroll dollar paid into general funds to provide healthcare and welfare for children, elderly, and the financially challenged.

Now, you may get a big bill if you don't have the government insurance cards at the time of service but you will get treated and can sort payment/negotiate/pro-bono requests out on the backside.

I'm an ex funeral director, I haven't practiced for a few years but still around the industry if that makes sense.
I surprised at this because you can't do it with an adult.
With an adult legally the NOK have a right to custody of body in a specific legal hierarchy if there is no executors (executors trump everyone) is as follows: the surviving husband or wife;
the children of the deceased and grandchildren in the case of a deceased child;
the mother and father of the deceased;
blood-related brothers and sisters, and niece or nephew in the case of a deceased sibling;
grandparents; and
blood-related uncles and aunts and cousins in the case of a deceased uncle or aunt)

I can't recall for stillbirth as the law is slightly different but I would of thought they are on poor legal footing.

It may o it be a drop in the ocean of the NHS budget but that money would pay for a lot.

Hospice care should be provided for by the NHS - it isn't. The CCG's pay for some of the care. It the vast majority is charity.

If you go abroad you get insurance or you don't go.

It's sad but other countries are
Much tougher on this than we are. You can't get treated In The states without insurance. Most other countries don't have the same wrap around care we do.

This is shocking if true. I assumed it was because they couldn't afford the costs incurred to take the body home. My aunt's body was repatriated last year and it cost nearly £10k.

Why on earth would someone 8 months pregnant travel without insurance?

I can totally understand you not wanting to fight it, but really my blood boils for you when I think of how the insurers acted. What a bunch of utter cunts. I don’t know how they sleep at night, frankly. If you don’t have a basic level of humanity/decency, what do you have?

I’m so so sorry, HerRoyalNotness.

How utterly, horrendously, callous, on top of an already unbearably heartbreaking situation. That should never have happened to you.

As far as the story goes I don't know what to think - just like with everything else media misrepresents according to aligned biases.

Repatriation appears to be a big issue. Not presenting the deceased baby for parents to grieve/hold (without releasing for transport) is really callous.

The judgement on this thread by some posters is staggering. You don't know where they are from (where in Europe), you don't know why they were in the UK, opinions are like assholes - everybody has one and most of them smell like shit.

when we had to deal with the overseas department following a visitor's admission due to a badly broken bone they where waiting in the bay when visitor was wheeled onto the ward.

but tbf they where very polite and efficient.

@Tolleshunt sorry about that, I misread.

We discovered our prem baby in the US wasn’t fully covered by our medical insurance even though she was such a small weight she should have been covered. Imagine getting a bill for a few thousand on the first anniversary of their death and having to pay up as insurance denied and not feeling strong enough to fight them

Some parts of america are 'aborting' babies after birth so i'm not surprised.

Eliza
I don't know where you reside - SCOTUS ruled in 2003 that Partial-birth abortion is unlawful and was subsequently upheld again in 2007. Partial-birth abortion is punishable by fines and imprisonment.

You do realize that abortion is being demonized in the USA and that we have multiple states now banning abortion past 6wk gestation, right? I wish you wouldn't spread bullshit extremist conjecture (lies) about the USA - it is a big enough mess without comments like yours.

FFS I had to confirm my "pronouns" and "reproductive organ names" at the OB/GYN a few months back i.e. call my vagina a vagina not a front hole - I was there for pre-conception care. That was a huge blow to my reproductive rights - the right to name my parts without consideration of male feelings - I had to classify myself as non-male in a doctor's office that specializes and ONLY treats females within reproductive years and delivers babies.

Lying about the state of women's reproductive rights is not going to help anyone.

If you are pregnant then your own health insurance covers anything to do with the pregnancy surely, including premature birth?

You would think, but thats not how US healthcare works.

If a child is born prematurely, to parents in the same situation, receives intensive care and is eventually deemed well enough to be MedEvaced home but the parents couldn't afford it you wouldn't be saying that the NHS was holding the child to ransom would you? You wouldn't just hand over a child who needed intensive medical care and let the parents take them home best way that they could.

This is such an odd story and the drs recount is worded in a very strange way. There's clearly far more to it than simply the hospital refused to release the body until the medical bill was paid for.

tolleshunt No, summer the parents travelled without insurance. Not the baby. Punishing the baby for the mistakes of the parents is wildly unethical.

If you are pregnant then your own health insurance covers anything to do with the pregnancy surely, including premature birth? That's the case with my annual policy (just checked the small print) as it covers you up to 40 weeks,.

HerRoyalNotness you misunderstand. I was responding to Summer’s point about another case where a couple holidaying in the US were faced with a massive bill to keep their baby alive in ITU.

Surely it's more likely that there were no proper arrangements in place for proper storage and repatriation. So the only thing the hospital can do is keep the baby. Until suitable arrangements are made

Makes sense

Surely it's more likely that there were no proper arrangements in place for proper storage and repatriation. So the only thing the hospital can do is keep the baby. Until suitable arrangements are made

Definitely this. Apologies for being blunt but you can't just handover human remains and say ta ta.

The babies cadaver can only be released through a proper process. And as other PP have said repatriation has significant costs.

The newspaper article is wide of the mark.

For anyone saying ‘well they do it in other countries’

I dont care! Other countries do all sorts of shitty things...its not bloody tit for tat...we don’t have to join in with them

If the baby hadn't died, would they have kept the baby??? Presumably no. They would have thought of something else

Well exactly. It is THEIR baby. Who the fuck do they think they are. By al means send a bill to the grieving parents . But you don't kidnap a baby's body.

Appalling stuff. I live in Mexico and a few years ago, a UK friend had a heart attack while working here and was treated in a private hospital. They "released" him at ten in the morning but, for some reason, didn't accept his insurance, so then refused to let him out of the hospital until late at night, while his friends ran around trying to sort the situation out.

A health institution doing something like that to someone who has just had a heart attack? And there are people here cheering the NHS going down the same route?

And we do have public health care here where he would have been treated for next to nothing, even being a foreigner.

*I bet it's nowhere near as black & white as that article makes out.

It does cost £Ks and masses of paperwork to repatriate a body, whoever you are, wherever you are.*

Exactly. You can't just give someone a dead baby to take home and hop on a flight with it in the hand baggage. There's a lot more to this story.

Some parts of america are 'aborting' babies after birth so i'm not surprised.

Where’s that then, Eliza? Sounds like anti-choice propaganda

Karwomannghia The article doesn't mention repatriation, no, but I think it's been written in a way to deliberately cause "outrage".

The article mentions the bassinet in a separate paragraph to the body being released and the bill referred to doesn't explicitly say that it was for treatment as they have used [ ].

@HerRoyalNotness and hugs

Sorry HerRoyalNotness