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A mother of triplets said she was charged nearly $1.5 million in hospital bills for the birth of her newborns.
Krysten Brown, who runs the TikTok account @the_brown_triplets, shared a video showing the bills for each child, which included a charge of $447,037.53 for her daughter, Jaymes, who was in the NICU for 31 days.
“She was just there to feed and grow, she was two pounds, 14 ounces when she was born. They charged us $447,037.53," Brown said (h/t DailyDot.com).
Her other two newborns, daughter Polly and son Baskyn, also received similar care during their extended stay at the hospital.
“Polly was in the NICU for 32 days,” Brown said. “She just needed the same things as James, except she needed a little bit more oxygen and she needed a little bit of caffeine while she was in the NICU. They charged us $542,785.39. Baskyn did the exact same things as James, except he was in the NICU for 35 days, he just needed a little extra time. So they charged us $481,261.2. This doesn’t even begin to cover my 11-day hospital stay before the babies were born.”
Several other mothers shared similar experiences regarding extremely high hospital bills in response to the video.
“My son was in the NICU for 121 days and had an ambulance ride to a bigger hospital,” one commenter wrote. “His total was something like $1.75-2M.”
“Sounds about right,” another commenter posted. “Our insurance was billed $1.6M for my twins being in the NICU for 60 days.”
The average charges for childbirth total $16,884 and include a $13,524 fee for delivery, a $3,660 for care for the mother and a $3,660 fee for care for the newborn, according to data shared by University of Wisconsin Health in 2018.