Woman Explains How Having 4 Babies At Once Resulted In A $4 Million Hospital Bill
She claimed that all four of her babies needed medical intervention.
Natalia Deriabina / Shutterstock It's no secret that giving birth in America often costs an exorbitant amount of money, sometimes even in cases where parents have insurance coverage.
Such was the case for a woman named Hanna Castle from Columbia, Ohio, who welcomed her quadruplets in 2021 but was hit with an enormous hospital bill that she wasn't quite expecting because of the care that her newborn babies needed after they were born.
Castle explained how having 4 babies at once resulted in a $4 million hospital bill.
"It's time. I'm talking about the cost of having four premature babies in America," Castle said in a TikTok video breaking down how she ended up with a $4 million hospital bill. She explained that the total didn't even include the delivery — just the care that her babies had to have in the NICU once they were born.
According to Resolve Medical Bills, a company that specializes in helping negotiate hospital bills for patients, a NICU stay in the U.S. can range from $3,000 to $20,000 per day. In severe cases where infants require prolonged stays or multiple surgeries, the total cost can soar into the hundreds of thousands or even cross a million dollars.
Her son Atlas, the smallest out of the four, at only 1 pound,14 ounces, was intubated right away after birth. He ended up spending only 64 days in the NICU and was able to come home the earliest out of his other three siblings. Once Castle calculated all the medications and everything else he needed with the cost for just the NICU, her total for one baby came out to $714,747.15.
Her daughter Magnolia was the second baby allowed to come after spending 74 days in the NICU. She'd been the healthiest baby the entire time she'd stayed in the hospital, but her care resulted in $728,625.56 in charges.
For her third baby and second son, Morgan, the infant spent 86 days in the NICU, where his total came out to $976,415.69. Castle's final child, Dominic, spent 147 days in the NICU, the longest out of every other baby. The total for his care came out to be an estimated $1.6 million.
The total for all 4 premature babies who needed life-saving treatment came out to a whopping $4,045,927.95.
It's fairly common for parents to receive unexpected charges on their hospital bills.
In a study published in JAMA Health Forum, almost one in five new parents received an unexpected charge averaging $744 on their hospital bill following childbirth, while other unlucky parents were subjected to a surprise bill of up to $2,000.
Misty McCrackin, a medical billing assistant with Hudson Valley Medical Bill Advocates, told the HuffPost that parents should reach out to the hospital after receiving their bill to go over any concerns seen in the overall bill received. This is especially important since an estimated 7% to 49% of paid claims contain a billing error.
Photo: Mikhail Nilov / Canva Pro
Castle explained that she and her husband anticipated that their quadruplets would need care once they were born and chose to make major life changes to financially prepare, including Castle quitting her job, enrolling in Medicaid, and enlisting her mother for help.
"At 16 weeks pregnant, I decided to quit my job to get some of that assistance because there was no other way," Castle told Good Morning America. "I moved my mom in with us to kind of help financially for the first year and see how the kids were going to be."
"If I would have been able to keep my job I would. I loved my job. I loved the company I worked for," she added. "I just think people nowadays are feeling like they can't be prepared, you can't be prepared. There's not truly any assistance [in] childcare."
Unfortunately, many new parents often don't get to enjoy newborn bliss without worrying about how they will afford to pay the hospital expenses.
Castle's story of taking extreme financial measures beforehand proves that the healthcare system in this country prioritizes money over the proper care that its citizens need. Without proper reform, the cost of birth will likely influence many in the decision to have children.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.