Delivering a normal baby in US costs more than a royal baby. $10k+ vs $9k

The average normal delivery in the United States costs over $10,000. The average bill that parents have to pay is about $3,000. Insurers cover more than $7,000.

In comparison, even the most luxurious pregnancy suite in the U.K in St. Mary's Hospital in London, the cost barely exceeds $9,000 total. In 2015, the Lindo Wing charged £5,670 ($8,900) for 24 hours in a deluxe room and a non-Caesarean delivery.

Also in 2015, research by the International Federation of Health Plans and Truven Health Analytics found that the average fee for a non-Cesarian delivery in the United States was $10,808. That rises to roughly $30,000 after accounting for care given before and after a pregnancy.

The costs are rampant despite the fact that of the OECD countries, the U.S is one of the lowest performers in all health indices, especially related to childbirth.

This is just an indicator of rampant price mismanagement and lack of standardization of medical procedures and systems in the U.S.

This problem costs the American people tens of billions of dollars per year. Money, that could be used to save more lives, and/or treat more people, if not bolster the medical resources.

One thing to note is that this shows the overall cost of the procedures in general to the system, regardless of who pays however much. The lack of standardization of costs and procedural billing is what drives inefficiencies up the roof, with one health provider doing $x while across the street another is doing $2x, and it constantly being in flux.

Another current and future cause and threat to even more increasing prices is the mass consolidation, mergers and acquisitions of large scale health providers into large health systems. These systems end up being the few or sole provider in a region or area and have been shown to bump up the price when assigning the price to any given procedure on any given day. Rural and small suburb areas are actually the worst affected due to a large portion of these providers being predatory in prices while being the sole provider.

One of the core and largest sources for the disgusting prices is because there is little to no market standards for priceing whether from the private market or government or mix.

Remember folks, as long as the cost to the system is high, whether the patient pays it or not, even if the insurance pays half of it, ultimately it will keep the market incentive to keep prices unstable and bloated, for everyone.

40k tax (traveling through the warp ... expecting the daemons in comments)