Just to give you an idea my OB's cost are about $5,500 up front (of course if you have medicare you can claim about $3,000 of that). Then there are the private hospital costs which I'm not too sure about as my health fund covers them, but I imagine they would probably start at $200 or $300 a day, without your labour costs..;
My actual delivery cost was pretty low. I think I saw the bill and it was $400 for a vaginal delivery (one peth shot was teh only drugs). The costs to stay in hosp varies from hosp to hosp but I think it was $750 a night as a girl i knew was paying privately.My daughter stayed in the nursery for two wks and i think her bill was about $7k. It pretty hard to estimate as when you have private health you just forward on the hosp bills and don't have to pay them. I do remember thinking lucky i was covered for my daughter. I have a feeling that a c-section is $4-5k as I think the girl who was paying privately said she spent close to $10k for the ob, hosp & her c-section. Fortunatley for her her baby had no issues.
If you have to be here for 3 months you would need to see an ob here and their fees vary siginificantly. My ob charges $2k care fee and $1k hospital fee.
You say you are coming home and can stay with your mum. Are you still covered by medicare?? If so you could also go through the public system or may find that medicare will cover some of the cost if you go private which would make the out of pocket to be covered by your insurer less. Also you could take out family cover here to at least cover the baby if it had issues, we had to upgrade ours to family cover at least 2 mths prior to birth and it's recommended that the baby would be covered from 24wks gestation in case of preterm birth. But i am not sure if that would apply if you were only just taking out cover as well instead of upgrading.
If you want to come home and deliver and dont have private cover you can just go public and I dont think you would pay anything.
We have private cover and have our own OB who charges $2200 for the preg and birth management. That is the cost to us, I know that "self insured" couples pay around $10-12k for the same care. We are choosing to go to a public hospital as in my opinion and experience they are the only ones able to deal with babies worst case scenario - the private ones cant do baby ICU or surgery on babies (needed both with first bub).
I would call your tertiary (major/largest with highest level baby ICU) hospital closest to your parents place. See what they offer.
If you are covered by medicare (not sure if that's the case for you) perhaps you could go public. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it - you just usually have to share a room & can't choose your doctor but that wasn't an issue for me. If you do that it will cost you absolutely nothing.
The costs charged to my private health insurance for my births have been about $5000 - $6000. I'm going from memory as I don't have the figures in front of me though to be sure though.
If the birth is uncomplicated then it's a straightforward charge from the hospital and a separate one from the attending OB. My OB has 2 charges depending on the birth. If there are complications or you need an epidural or a c/sect then there is anaethasist fees and fees from other Drs called in to assist. I have had 2 births that had complications where this applied. I guess you need to take into consideration the possibility of a complication and if you can afford to pay for that when working out what to do.
Not sure if that is what you are after or if it helps with your situation. I'm in Victoria.
I really appreciate your replies. I never thought about insurance for the baby. Now I can add that to my list of things to do!
I am covered still covered by Medicare, so public is an option. I read on another thread that private hospitals often don't have emergency surgery facilities for newborns, so that makes public more attractive.
I guess the big variable is complications. If there's any indication of looming problems I think I'd want to go home. I had a m/c last year and the on-call obstetrician (French) had terrible English. It made the situation even more distressing because he couldn't understand my questions.
My only worry about going home is spending so much time away from my partner. He could maybe take a month off work. I really think it's important for him to be there at the birth and in the first few weeks.
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