Brum Mum hit with £75k hospital bill after premature birth in USA

[DGRossetti]

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/bartley-green-mum-hit-75k-19484536

A mum has racked up a £75,000 medical bill after prematurely giving birth in America - two days before she was due to fly home to Birmingham.

Amy Collins, from Birmingham, needed an emergency caesarean to deliver tiny William Collins in Texas on December 11.

He was born at 24 weeks and weighed just 1lb 9ozs and needed specialist care in hospital where he remains.

Amy, 30, had been due to fly back to Birmingham on December 13.

But with no insurance she has been left with a medical bill of £75,000 for the delivery and care of her son - with the charges set to rocket further.

(contd)

Let's guess "they're setting up a
Go fund me because she didn't take out insurance"!

@ElementalIllusion

She’s married to an American.

“ Amy has been married to Texan engineer Greg Collins for the last year and is also mum to seven-year-old daughter Ava, from a previous relationship.

She had been living off and on in America after she met Greg online three years ago when an online romance blossomed.”

Why is she and the baby not covered under his insurance?

I had very little sympathy for her for not having travel insurance before, I have zero sympathy at all now I’ve read she is married to an American and living on/off in America with him.

She should know the American healthcare system, and he 100% will, there’s no excuse not to be appropriately covered in their situation.

he obvious didnt have insurance that covered it he may not beinsured many Americans are not either why she was idiotic enough to go to a country with no medical insurance she should pay not anyone else like the us taxpayer

Hope4theBestPlan4theWorst the linked article says they already have

Incredibly irresponsible. Her poor other child, wonder if she was left behind in the US each time her mum returned, or with family in the UK? She couldn't have been saving that much money, if she was buying both of them flights back and forth but not paying insurance. And during a pandemic. Utter stupidity on both parents' sides.

Remember, these are averages. Costs can vary greatly from area to area and there are lots of other factors that may reduce the amount that insurance pays. I'd say it wouldn't be unusual for a family to have $100,000 outstanding after insurance from a premature birth when all is said and done.

American HCP here. Most medical insurance here has a "stop loss" or maximum out of pocket cost provision. Mine is $5,000 for the whole family. After we hit that, everything is covered at 100% by insurance.

The cap on out of pocket costs is annual.

AcrossthePond it says she didn't have insurance. I wonder if she's aware that hospitals can, and do, regularly take assets from people who can't pay their bills. I wonder if the husband's house and car will be under threat. I can't even imagine living in the US during Covid, pregnant, no insurance, depending on the NHS for prenatal care and flying over for it. It literally boggles my mind.

Isn't it dodgy for non usa people to give birth in the states as the us courts consider the child a us citizen and back the us parent in custody disputes?

To all those saying

Well she was silly not having insurance, this wasn’t a holiday and once out in Texas it’s not straightforward getting insurance - in fact it’s a blardy confusing madness

@Notthe9oclocknewsathon The very best insurance covers pregnancy but not the unborn baby. They are counted as a separate person and can’t be insured. I discovered this when reading the fine print. You think it covers you because it says it covers pregnancy and birth but from moment baby is born it won’t cover baby.
It does your policy must just have been very poor.

I googled dax and his parents. After using the donated funds to fly back from New York on a private jet, they seem to have disappeared from the public eye. Most mysterious

It's very unfortunate to have given birth so early and it must be very worrying to be in this position with such a tiny baby. That said, if she's been living 'on and off' in the USA for several years then where's her 7 yo been going to school? It doesn't sound like a very settled life for her daughter.

We have caps on maximum out of pocket for the year. They vary massively from plan to plan. We pay extra to have DH is covered by my work insurance because his plans out of pocket max is very high. Generally families are looking at 5-10k for a bad year as long as they manage to keep treatment in-network (which is a whole other crazy issue). I have really good insurance and my employer covers 85% of the monthly premiums, that leaves me with $700 a month to pay myself. For me that is not a problem, but for minimum wage workers in my state that would take 90 hours of labor in the month just to pay their share of health insurance, which is basically impossible. so if they have coverage, it is generally not as good of a plan.

@Love51

Isn't it dodgy for non usa people to give birth in the states as the us courts consider the child a us citizen and back the us parent in custody disputes?

14th amendment makes anyone born on US soil a US citizen automatically.

@PlanDeRaccordement

The very best insurance covers pregnancy but not the unborn baby. They are counted as a separate person and can’t be insured. I discovered this when reading the fine print. You think it covers you because it says it covers pregnancy and birth but from moment baby is born it won’t cover baby.

Er, no that’s not true. I have a sister in the US who had twin boys and their care was covered by their private health insurance as well as my sisters care. The way you’re saying it is like every parent in the US has to pay all the antenatal costs of their babies because they can’t be insured. That’s not true at all.

No, I’m talking about the medical aspect of travel insurance.

Even with insurance it can cost a lot of money to give birth in America, especially if there are complications. It was an extremely risky plan to stay uninsured and come back to the U.K.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/birth-america-cost-us-hospital-c-section-b1765878.html%3famp

@Clymene

It's baby Dax all over again. Did anyone ever find out to the hundreds of thousands they didn't need that they said they were going to use to set up a charity?

Who is baby Dax?

Where is the father in all of this? Will he be seen as equally liable for the costs of the baby? The costs of care in both the short and long term will be horrific for that baby.

I thought of baby Dax as soon as I read it.

Where has this woman been getting her antenatal care from? Surely she’d have needed insurance for that? And what if her 7yo had become ill, who’d have paid for that? I can’t get over the stupidity of some people.

Her husband sounds as much use as tits on a fish, too. Why has he not sorted insurance out for them all?

If I was her, once my baby was healthy, would fly back to the UK and let them chase the money. At least it saved the NHS a bunch of money

@BedknobsNoBroomsticks

I have very little sympathy for her. Yes it must be awful having to go through that in another country however she should have had insurance.

Reminds me of the couple a few years ago who amasses a fortune in go fund me donations when the woman gave birth in New York I think but that was quite close to being a scam. They said they weren't covered by insurance but were and the money quietly disappeared.

I remember them, didn't they call rhe baby Dax or something similar?

Oh yes
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-30672053
.

Absolute idiots. Zero sympathy.
A woman at work was begging us to donate to her GoFundMe for her son who fell of a motorbike in Thailand, uninsured. Err, no thank you to your emotional blackmail.

@sunshinehappy20

If I was her, once my baby was healthy, would fly back to the UK and let them chase the money. At least it saved the NHS a bunch of money

How would that work given she is married to an American who lives and works in America?

I cannot understand, especially Asher husband is an American why she didn’t have any insurance. Anything could have happened. She could have been in a car accident, run over, suddenly develop appendicitis. Giving birth was just one thing out of many that could have gone wrong.

Dp was in intensive care in an LA hospital with pneumonia and his bill was close to £250,000.
We had travel insurance that cost £140 which I booked with our flights and they picked up the bill.
Ridiculous to go anywhere without insurance

I don’t know, it’s all very odd.

I wonder if her older child is still in the UK and living with her mum. I do know it takes years to sort out the visa stuff after marrying an American. A guy I know went through it. It’s hard to move a child abroad if the dad has contact.

It all sounds very complicated and she should have had proper health insurance.