Wednesday 7 July 2010

Information needed - the cost of childbirth

I am writing an article for Mothers For Womens Lib.

It is regarding the differences in maternity health care services between the U.K (where there is socialised health care) and the U.S (where health care is currently mostly privatised).

The denizens of LJ have already been wonderful in providing me with data, but I'm aware that LJ only responses leaves me with a very small cross section of society and I'd like to broaden the scope of my data.

The information I am looking for is:

-Where do you live?
-Do you have insurance, and if so what insurance do you have?
-Did you pay for anything out of pocket?
-Did you employ any additional services such as a doula or a postpartum nurse?
-Did you get your ideal birth? Were you prevented from your ideal birth for financial reasons?
-Did you birth go the way you had planned? If not, are you happy with what ended up happening?
-How much did your birth cost (even if you didn't pay it)?

Many thanks to those of you that are willing to share your experiences with me, the number crunching will take me some time, so the blog post will take a few days to follow!

Any qualitative data will be kept anonymous, and will only be shared with your consent.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Where do you live? Ohio, USA

-Do you have insurance, and if so what insurance do you have? I have no insurance, it's too expensive to get through my husbands work. It's would be cheaper for us to get it from red cross blue shield but even then it's a substantial chunk of money so we just don't have insurance.

-Did you pay for anything out of pocket? Everything.

-Did you employ any additional services such as a doula or a postpartum nurse? No.

-Did you get your ideal birth? I hd an ideal birth with my first child because my husband was in the military and we had dreat insurance. Were you prevented from your ideal birth for financial reasons? With my second daughter I had a disastrous birth and was released from the hospital the next day because the insurance I had at that time was not good.

-Did you birth go the way you had planned? If not, are you happy with what ended up happening? yes on the first, no on the second.

-How much did your birth cost (even if you didn't pay it)? My first birth cost me 25 dollars. My second cost me 1,300.00.