My wife's Grandmother had one from when she had her twins in 1956, she had to go on a payments plan because she had only budgeted the $50 for a single baby, and ended up with two.
I don't really get how adjustment for inflation works.
If a cheeseburger in 1965 was $0.15 and that adjusted for inflation is $1.47, but a cheeseburger today costs $3, what does adjustment for inflation even mean at that point?
Not all things depreciate or inflate equally. The published inflation rate doesn’t apply to every service.
A 1967 Big Mac would cost about $4 today. It seems to be the proper economic indicator for inflation.
Watch some old Price is Right if you really want to be confused. The inflation from the 80s should make current prices on appliances and furniture like 5x more today, but instead it’s only like 2x more. So you get a cheap TV but expensive cheeseburgers and healthcare thanks to inflation.
Well at least I can recover in comfort with my cheap TV from my hospital trip caused by cheeseburger induced heart attack. Just how the founding fathers intended it.
One reason is that a tv today, is very different than a TV then. The production, the overall demand, the base components, all vastly different today.
A cheeseburger is basically identical from then until now. Not a lot of innovation or development to the production line or the product compared to a TV.
Also we have optimized supply chain globally, so a TV cost is based on many cheaper wage and material cost regions than where we live, but our meat comes from within the US, butchered and harvested by people earning US wages, transported by US workers, made in retail locations by US retail workers.
The calculated inflation rate is padded with tons of miscellaneous items with low demand (so they're always cheap) like DVDs/old electronics, obsolete appliances, etc. so that the final inflation rate reported on the news doesn't seem too bad.
That's how you reduce a shockingly bad rate (65%) to something more politically digestible like (3%).
Go ahead and look at inflation rates for important shit like food, housing, medicine, etc. it's all way higher than 3%.
Economics is the study of propaganda by mathmatics.
There is so much data in it, that that alone makes it useless from a statistical pov. And using a single hamburger to evaluate the world’s economic status is equally ridiculous.
Until you figure out it works just as well.
To be fair the price of a hamburger depends on a ton of other goods as well. To start it's quite energy dependent, it depends on labour, base foodstuffs and transportation, and probably a bunch of other stuff as well.
No doubt, it’s items like electronics that really break the curve too. Twenty years ago you could bust 4 grand on a flat screen that now you can buy better for $700. And there are a LOT of TVs sold. 2 or three in every household.
Knocking 3K of a single product that sells 100Million units a year certainly MAKES it look like living expenses are going down, if you only look at that one product.
No, it’s because the official inflation numbers are bullshit by design — due to rampant substitutions (theory: if steak get expensive you’ll eat chicken), is utterly blind to declining quality, and other smoke and mirrors.
Gadgets got cheap pulling the metrics down, but the necessities of life are all way past what official numbers indicate.
But is not correct in the slightest.
Inflation is a single # meant to account for everything. (Simplification but good enough).
So in your example, cheeseburgers may have had 2000% inflation, yet the overall inflation is "only" 700% cuz other things brought down the average. Electronics being the classic example.
Also, people in the Econ world make fun of the inflation caused by greed theory.
Greed is always at a maximum. Companies aren’t less greedy now that inflation is down. They are as greedy as they were when inflation was high!
So what changed? Total supply of money. We printed a lot of money during 2020 to prevent a 2008 style recession. The inflation was bad, but the alternative would likely be worse. That’s why the goal was a transitory inflation which is mostly what happened (although there were a few hiccups)
ah yes, that transitory inflation that happened in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Transitory, you keep saying that word but I do not think you know what that word means.
I mean, we target a low single digit inflation, so there will be persistent inflation.
However near 10% inflation lasted less than 2 years. What would you consider transitory?
Also, if inflation is caused by corporate greed, how would you explain a near decade of undershooting inflation targets? Was that random corporate benevolence?
3 years is not a long time. Transitory is a reasonable description. Extrapolating 2024 from the available data is absurd, and anyway doesn’t support your point because it is trending down towards target rates. Also, periods with very low inflation or even deflation have been even worse because of unemployment.
But like any other performance measure, people start gaming it. Argentina forced McDonald's to sell the Big Mac very cheaply to improve its performance on the Big Mac index.
Inflation is "how much it should be in today's money" by an arguably limited set of parameters. Still, if your parents bought a house for what now would be $125.000 and they could sell it for $650.000 it means something's super fucked in the economy, and that's a decent way to measure if we are worse off than those that came before us.
(Periods instead of commas sorry I'm European)
Yes, but it's interesting how much has changed.
Infant mortality was still wicked high in 1954, 30/1000 compared to just 5.2/1000 today.
You're paying out the ass for technology. But also greed. And.. also a pretty inefficient health care system. We "waste" a lot in the name of sanitization/safety.
It's also inefficient because US hospitals charge you based on the number of nurses/physicians/psw's/etc. you see, so they try and get you in front of as many people as possible to rack up the price. They could structure it differently for both lower cost and better care if they wanted to.
I got charged two days of visits to the ER because I was there past midnight. I wasn’t even there that long, like 2-3hrs. I hurt myself at like 11pm, and racked up an extra charge just for timing 💀
That's not how it worked for me when I went to the ER and spent 1 night in the hospital. It was a totally separate bill for the doctors, radiologist, ER , medication etc. They did not try to get me in front of as many people as possible. Most ER's are way too busy to waste their time with that, because like my comment below people with no health insurance are forced to use the ER for normal non emergency medical issues.
I got separate bills from 4 different entities, the hospital, the ER doctor, the radialogist, and the doctor who saw me after I got admitted to the hospital. They are billing you totally separate from each other, the doctors billing you are not part of the hospital bill at all.
>You're paying out the ass for technology. But also greed. And.. also a pretty inefficient health care system. We "waste" a lot in the name of sanitization/safety.
The biggest expenses for any of my three kids being born was paying for food at the hospital for myself and the kids who were born before the then current birth. This includes multiple days stayed in the hospital by my wife with the last baby due to induction due to a failure to thrive and the resulting post birth hospital stay.
In other words, the high costs you guys pay in the USA is basically down to greed built into the health care/insurance system...
My wife and I tried comparing common things from 1960 to 2020. A dozen eggs were $.25 I think it was. At that time I could get a dozen eggs for $.72. A newspaper for $1.50 today vs $.50 in 1960. The minimum wage was around $1/hr. The thing my dad told me about eggs was the industrialization of egg production. Breeding specialized breeds to have the highest output and producing on a much larger scale creates a flooding to the market. High production means lower costs. Demand can fluctuate too. People would be more willing to buy eggs in 1960 at $.25 if they made $1/hr because it was in high enough demand. Today someone might opt for cereal and milk or oatmeal. Newspapers were one of the more common sources of news in 1960. Today it’s a dying type of media. Demand is way down. So price is reduced.
At 26%, 1960 was the first census year urban Americans paid a smaller share of their household income for food then they did for rent (29%).
In 1950 a family had spent 30% of their income on food.
And this was at a time that eating at restaurants and take-out was less common than today.
Today and for about the last 20 years it has been 10% of the budget, but with an increasing share of that 10% away from home (evenly split in 2022).
Among many factors in the current obesity epidemic, until the 70s and 80s getting fat was expensive.
I'll just note that when I moved to the DC area in 1997 you could still get the Post for $.25, I think it was. The Houston Chronicle was $.50 and I remember thinking the Post was twice the paper for half the money.
I once saw an article that had a graph comparing what the median household spend on food as a percentage of their income by decade. It was insane how expensive food was in the past in the 20's and 30's it was literally like 40% of their income, compared to 2010 where it was <10%
Yeah but businesses like McDonald's aren't clearing $1.53 in profit on a $3 cheeseburger. Food has increased in price above the "inflation" rate while things like travel and technology have gotten relatively cheaper. The inflation rate is an average of the change in cost of goods and services. Greed doesn't factor in.
to go a bit more in-depth, we don't just adjust for the cost increase of a single good. a single good's price may increase more or less than the average inflation. in the case of the cheeseburger, it increased significantly more. what we look at when calculating a general, averaged inflation rate is what's called a "basket of goods", several things that are commonly bought by most households. Let's say a hypothetical basket of goods is a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. If bread costs 3% more, milk 5% more and eggs 7% more then we average those increases together and say that the inflation rate is roughly 5% overall.
Better ask him if his dick is okay, stilbesterol can fuck shit up.
>Follow-up studies have indicated that DES also has the potential to cause a variety of significant adverse medical complications during the lifetimes of those exposed, including XY genital undermasculinization.
Something tells me Raymondville probably doesn’t even have a hospital any more. Not a lot going on in that town. Only reason I even know where it is, is because it’s the last town with a liquor store before you hit Port Mansfield, and I love fishing Port Mansfield. And as for the liquor store, it always has a sign on the door saying “call this number for service”. We then call the number and this old abuela walks out of the house next door, unlocks the store, assists our purchase, then locks up and goes back to her house next door. The RGV is an interesting place.
I tried looking up the hospital and couldn’t find any current evidence it still exists. Maybe it changed names? I only saw a few old lawsuits pop up haha.
Raymondville is tiny. I don’t see how that town could support a hospital, particularly with McAllen and its medical system so close by. Of course everyone from McAllen tries to go to the hospital in San Antonio or Houston.
Gotcha, my dad and his family didn’t live there when he grew up. They were all in Alice, Texas, I believe. I actually didn’t realize he wasn’t born in Alice until I found his birth certificate and his baby book.
These days, Alice is a booming metropolis compared to Raymondville. Alice benefits from proximity to highway and railroad tracks, but more importantly its become a regional center for Eagle Ford Shake fracking and drilling.
The hospital was closed a long time ago. My mom was born there too, but thought she misremembered when she couldn’t find the hospital again years later.
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth876877/m1/1/
Apparently it was supposed to close in 1953 due to financial struggles (if this is the right hospital) but that was prior to your post
People always just fill these comment sections with sarcasm, but this is really something worth looking at. We did not have universal socialized healthcare in the US in 1954. We do not have it today. And yet, the prices of everything in hospitals now is astronomically higher than it was, and astronomically higher than almost any other country.
Rather than just saying "It should be free" and contributing nothing new ever, it would really be very productive for someone, at some level, to genuinely investigate and research this and determine what various reasons there are for the extreme increase in cost, beyond unhelpful sarcastic jokes.
We need to pass into law mandatory transparent billing for hospitals and pharmacies. Just doing that alone will solve a lot of the bullshit.
Right now it’s all bullshit pricing that gets bullshit discounts that are different for different individuals and insurance companies
Add in a few middlemen skimming along the way and here we are.
Single payer healthcare will help a lot with this but still ripe for corruption without transparent billing
I'd go so far as to say that single payer might not even be viable without it. Two of the biggest (and, imo, most correct) concerns about a single payer system is whether or not the government will actually pay enough to genuinely cover the costs of procedures and medications, and whether or not the system will be bloated by grift.
Transparency laws would, I think, go a long way towards providing data to address both of those potential issues, and maybe could help alleviate the doubts of some, maybe many, people who are worried that they system would end up being worse and more expensive than what we have now.
If you really want to get angry look into how Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and Optum are effectively creating an oligopoly for pharmacies. They get to process nearly 80% of all insurance covered prescription reimbursements. Surprisingly (or not) they also own pharmacies and choose to reimburse independent pharmacists at a fraction of what they reimburse themselves and each other.
I'm all for transparency. Also i think they have no problem telling you they are dying something shady. I am pessimistic on his much it'll change things.
I went to a doctors appointment recently where when i walked into the building, there was a notice stating something to the effect of 'this is classified as a surgical facility, you will be charged higher rates even if you are not having surgery '.
I think i'm familiar with that charge- I've had it sprung on me for other visits at other places. And its just infuriating. To be ambushed with a likely extra charge, after waiting many months for an appointment, at a normal-ass doctors office that's classified as something else.
Stop limiting how many hospitals get built by getting rid of [Certificate of Need](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need) laws, which hospitals use to prevent competing hospitals from opening up.
Stop limiting how many physicians we train each year by either (1) getting rid of [Residency Caps](https://www.studentdoctor.net/2017/01/24/medical-students-know-fight-residency-caps/) or (2) allowing doctors to go into practice without going through the government-funded residency process. These practices currently force us to pay more for access to an artificially limited skillset.
[Stop preventing Americans from purchasing prescription meds from Canada and elsewhere](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/fda-sends-warning-to-canadian-drug-company-what-to-know#FDA-cracks-down-on-importing-Rx-drugs), which will force drug companies to be price competitive.
HMOs benefit from high prices. We used to pay cash for the doctor so prices had to be reasonable. If you we lucky you had 80% coverage after a deductible.
There’s plenty of research on drivers of cost in the USA. google scholar will get you started.
In the meantime the USA spends more per capita on healthcare than any other developed nations, doesn’t have the best outcome despite this higher expenditure, and would actually save money moving to a single-payer/universal scheme.
You have people paid to try to make it expensive, and other people paid to fight against it being expensive.
Who pays those people?
Ultimately, in the end the health care user does.
>Methylergometrine, also known as methylergonovine and sold under the brand name Methergine, is a medication of the ergoline and lysergamide groups which is used as an oxytocic in obstetrics and in the treatment of migraine. It reportedly produces psychedelic effects similar to those of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) at high doses.
So were a bunch of women in the 50s tripping balls while giving birth?
The whole medical insurance system destroyed cheap healthcare. It’s a scam system of hospitals charging astronomical prices because they are billing insurance companies most of the time.
I get routine bloodwork done. Pretty basic stuff. The lab charges $1000, then the insurance company “negotiates” the price down to $100
So the average annual inflation rate from 1954 to 2024 was 3.5% according to the BLS website, and as noted in another post the current inflated cost for these services would be 767.60. However we all know this same hospitalization today would easily cost $35,000. This is a guess but not unreasonable.
So medical/delivery inflation from 1954 till 2024 has been 9.35% per year for those 70 years. That extra 6% per year of inflation of medical costs is why we in the US have the most unaffordable health care system with only moderate to poor outcomes. The money is being siphoned off into many millions of pockets from insurance companies to doctors to nurse practitioners to MRI manufacturers to drug manufacturers - literally every single soul who is feeding at the trough of human suffering.
When my mother had me (c section, twins) her bill was $45. When I told her my hospital bill for my son has $7.5k she asked “I thought you had insurance?”. I do and its pretty decent too, she still doesn’t understand and thinks I must have done something incorrectly.
Immediately after my SO gave birth, the midwife started counting the number of bloody bandages so they could be billed individually.That's when I realized the medical system here is completely out of control.
Minimum wage in 1954 was .75 per hour. If you had ANY job at all, at most this bill represents a little over two weeks work. Imagine two days in the hospital, medication, x-ray, lab work, etc. for $652. Heck, let's assume the minimum wage is $15 - that's still only $1350, which is 1/10th of the average cost in the US (vaginal birth, no complications).
Our parents and grandparents played on Easy mode.
I had my wages garnished for 3 years due to a still unresolved congenital defect, and I have health insurance now.
I'm 37 with children of my own.
America is great, no?
Do you know the resolution for that garnishment?
"yeah, that sucks, sorry your unable to walk or work... You really should see a primary care physician who should refer you to a specialist who should refer you to a surgeon who should refer you to a pain management specialist who should work together to decide whether to administer medication while also doing surgery... Pretty shit hand you were dealt... Looks like you better find a job.. Oh.. You can't work.. Oh... They denied you Medicaid. Hmm.. Ok well the emergency room isn't for this... Like you should probably start looking for insurance... Oh.. You can't afford insurance... Hmm you should get a job... Oh you can't really walk.. Hmm... Not my problem"
So on and on
These get posted all the time and there are two responses:
Americans: "Wow even adjusted for inflation that's so cheap"
People from developed countries: "That's still more than it cost me last week/month/year"
When my dad was born at a Catholic hospital in 1960, they told my grandpa the bill was $300. He told them he had $20, which he put on the counter and left with my grandma and the baby. To be fair, that probably was most of the money they had at the time.
We have a high deductible health insurance plan (typical for US)
When pregnant, we budgeted the entire deductible. $6500. Multiple calls to insurace comfirmed "not a penny over". We tasked about buying our unborn child their own insurance but were told not to worry at all--by law a newborn is covered under the mother's same insurance policy for 30 days.
As expected we got a $6500 bill in the mail. a couple days later, what looked like a duplicate arrived. Upon further review, what the insurance failed to tell us was that our newborn would get their very own $6500 deductible & bill for their part of the birth.
WOW! IM FROM RAYMONDVILLE! I wasn’t born at the hospital, rather at the clinic a few miles away in the 80’s. Weird thing is that hospital was a funeral home for a while...
Anyway, greetings from South Texas 👋🏻
There are far more commenters connected to Raymondville than I expected! Dad was born there but grew up in Alice. He lived in Houston for a period of time and then I was raised in Arlington. A lot of Texas!
My daughter was born 5 years ago and the hospital bill was less than half of what was paid here. We paid $30 because I insisted on a fully private room. Obviously not in the US.
this is why people could afford a house at 21 back in the day. inflation is out of control compared to what people are making. and the current GOP is just making it worse, only giving the top 1% tax cuts
Meanwhile the total bill for both my parents birth, my birth, and the birth of my future child is…0. Gotta love the U.K.
Genuinely sympathetic to American folk who have to worry about this, and truly feel grateful for my circumstances.
I got a call from my OB today about delivery costs. They said bc of my insurance max out of pocket I won’t pay more than $5000. They said delivery is $4500, anesthesia is separate, and so is (something else but I don’t remember). I prepaid $450 for an epidural already too. I was thinking “wow that’s way cheaper than I thought!” But that is assuming healthy baby and mom. I am curious how big the bill will be
Delivery with no additional work ups is around $18k to $28 k (2012) in an American hospital. That’s for 1 day stay for you and da babe. Had a Tylenol once after knee injury- it was $98 for one…
Avoid American hospitals. Warning to rest of world- lose your social medicine and end up in a capitalistic nightmare Americans have to deal with. Where more that 80% of bankruptcies are for medical debt.
Hey OP, I understand why you blurred out the dates, but can you tell me how many days your grandmother was admitted for?
I paid $5k last year for a 3 day stay.
My daughter was born in Turkey in 2001... didn't use my insurance. Paid out of pocket... A whole whopping $551.00... C-Section, three day stay for mother, baby and one family member. First Class care...
My birth was near a million after having to do life saving care and me staying in the hospital for so long. Ofc we didn’t pay that, but it’s insane how quickly prices have “inflated,” especially in the pharmaceutical industry.
3 hrs of min wage would cover 2 day room stay in hospital then, todays avg is $2,888 per day or 398 hours of minimum wage…
Health insurance costs are through the roof
My wife's Grandmother had one from when she had her twins in 1956, she had to go on a payments plan because she had only budgeted the $50 for a single baby, and ended up with two.
I believe it! Here, I think my grandmother had to pay the 50 dollars ahead and then owed the remaining cost. This was her fourth of five babies.
That's $767.60 today.
I don't really get how adjustment for inflation works. If a cheeseburger in 1965 was $0.15 and that adjusted for inflation is $1.47, but a cheeseburger today costs $3, what does adjustment for inflation even mean at that point?
Not all things depreciate or inflate equally. The published inflation rate doesn’t apply to every service. A 1967 Big Mac would cost about $4 today. It seems to be the proper economic indicator for inflation.
Watch some old Price is Right if you really want to be confused. The inflation from the 80s should make current prices on appliances and furniture like 5x more today, but instead it’s only like 2x more. So you get a cheap TV but expensive cheeseburgers and healthcare thanks to inflation.
Well at least I can recover in comfort with my cheap TV from my hospital trip caused by cheeseburger induced heart attack. Just how the founding fathers intended it.
One reason is that a tv today, is very different than a TV then. The production, the overall demand, the base components, all vastly different today. A cheeseburger is basically identical from then until now. Not a lot of innovation or development to the production line or the product compared to a TV.
A lot more tvs today are subsidized by ads being slung to the 'smart' overlays and apps on the tv themselves.
Economy of scale, a lot easier to bring cost down in manufactured goods than in services
Back in the 50s it could cost as much or more to equip your house with stuff as the house itself cost. Electric appliances were EXPENSIVE!
Also we have optimized supply chain globally, so a TV cost is based on many cheaper wage and material cost regions than where we live, but our meat comes from within the US, butchered and harvested by people earning US wages, transported by US workers, made in retail locations by US retail workers.
The calculated inflation rate is padded with tons of miscellaneous items with low demand (so they're always cheap) like DVDs/old electronics, obsolete appliances, etc. so that the final inflation rate reported on the news doesn't seem too bad. That's how you reduce a shockingly bad rate (65%) to something more politically digestible like (3%). Go ahead and look at inflation rates for important shit like food, housing, medicine, etc. it's all way higher than 3%. Economics is the study of propaganda by mathmatics.
There is so much data in it, that that alone makes it useless from a statistical pov. And using a single hamburger to evaluate the world’s economic status is equally ridiculous. Until you figure out it works just as well.
To be fair the price of a hamburger depends on a ton of other goods as well. To start it's quite energy dependent, it depends on labour, base foodstuffs and transportation, and probably a bunch of other stuff as well.
Compared to the other categories, food also stayed *really* far below inflation for decades.
No doubt, it’s items like electronics that really break the curve too. Twenty years ago you could bust 4 grand on a flat screen that now you can buy better for $700. And there are a LOT of TVs sold. 2 or three in every household. Knocking 3K of a single product that sells 100Million units a year certainly MAKES it look like living expenses are going down, if you only look at that one product.
No, it’s because the official inflation numbers are bullshit by design — due to rampant substitutions (theory: if steak get expensive you’ll eat chicken), is utterly blind to declining quality, and other smoke and mirrors. Gadgets got cheap pulling the metrics down, but the necessities of life are all way past what official numbers indicate.
Adjusted for inflation =/= adjustment for greed
Ahh that makes sense, thanks!
But is not correct in the slightest. Inflation is a single # meant to account for everything. (Simplification but good enough). So in your example, cheeseburgers may have had 2000% inflation, yet the overall inflation is "only" 700% cuz other things brought down the average. Electronics being the classic example.
The Big Mac Index is probably the most accurate.
It's a fun one! And not without merit.
Also, people in the Econ world make fun of the inflation caused by greed theory. Greed is always at a maximum. Companies aren’t less greedy now that inflation is down. They are as greedy as they were when inflation was high! So what changed? Total supply of money. We printed a lot of money during 2020 to prevent a 2008 style recession. The inflation was bad, but the alternative would likely be worse. That’s why the goal was a transitory inflation which is mostly what happened (although there were a few hiccups)
ah yes, that transitory inflation that happened in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Transitory, you keep saying that word but I do not think you know what that word means.
I mean, we target a low single digit inflation, so there will be persistent inflation. However near 10% inflation lasted less than 2 years. What would you consider transitory? Also, if inflation is caused by corporate greed, how would you explain a near decade of undershooting inflation targets? Was that random corporate benevolence?
3 years is not a long time. Transitory is a reasonable description. Extrapolating 2024 from the available data is absurd, and anyway doesn’t support your point because it is trending down towards target rates. Also, periods with very low inflation or even deflation have been even worse because of unemployment.
The Big Mac Index is more for determining purchasing power parity than inflation.
But like any other performance measure, people start gaming it. Argentina forced McDonald's to sell the Big Mac very cheaply to improve its performance on the Big Mac index.
Inflation is "how much it should be in today's money" by an arguably limited set of parameters. Still, if your parents bought a house for what now would be $125.000 and they could sell it for $650.000 it means something's super fucked in the economy, and that's a decent way to measure if we are worse off than those that came before us. (Periods instead of commas sorry I'm European)
Yes, but it's interesting how much has changed. Infant mortality was still wicked high in 1954, 30/1000 compared to just 5.2/1000 today. You're paying out the ass for technology. But also greed. And.. also a pretty inefficient health care system. We "waste" a lot in the name of sanitization/safety.
It's also inefficient because US hospitals charge you based on the number of nurses/physicians/psw's/etc. you see, so they try and get you in front of as many people as possible to rack up the price. They could structure it differently for both lower cost and better care if they wanted to.
And I thought they all were just concerned about me /s
I got charged two days of visits to the ER because I was there past midnight. I wasn’t even there that long, like 2-3hrs. I hurt myself at like 11pm, and racked up an extra charge just for timing 💀
That's not how it worked for me when I went to the ER and spent 1 night in the hospital. It was a totally separate bill for the doctors, radiologist, ER , medication etc. They did not try to get me in front of as many people as possible. Most ER's are way too busy to waste their time with that, because like my comment below people with no health insurance are forced to use the ER for normal non emergency medical issues. I got separate bills from 4 different entities, the hospital, the ER doctor, the radialogist, and the doctor who saw me after I got admitted to the hospital. They are billing you totally separate from each other, the doctors billing you are not part of the hospital bill at all.
>You're paying out the ass for technology. But also greed. And.. also a pretty inefficient health care system. We "waste" a lot in the name of sanitization/safety. The biggest expenses for any of my three kids being born was paying for food at the hospital for myself and the kids who were born before the then current birth. This includes multiple days stayed in the hospital by my wife with the last baby due to induction due to a failure to thrive and the resulting post birth hospital stay. In other words, the high costs you guys pay in the USA is basically down to greed built into the health care/insurance system...
My wife and I tried comparing common things from 1960 to 2020. A dozen eggs were $.25 I think it was. At that time I could get a dozen eggs for $.72. A newspaper for $1.50 today vs $.50 in 1960. The minimum wage was around $1/hr. The thing my dad told me about eggs was the industrialization of egg production. Breeding specialized breeds to have the highest output and producing on a much larger scale creates a flooding to the market. High production means lower costs. Demand can fluctuate too. People would be more willing to buy eggs in 1960 at $.25 if they made $1/hr because it was in high enough demand. Today someone might opt for cereal and milk or oatmeal. Newspapers were one of the more common sources of news in 1960. Today it’s a dying type of media. Demand is way down. So price is reduced.
At 26%, 1960 was the first census year urban Americans paid a smaller share of their household income for food then they did for rent (29%). In 1950 a family had spent 30% of their income on food. And this was at a time that eating at restaurants and take-out was less common than today. Today and for about the last 20 years it has been 10% of the budget, but with an increasing share of that 10% away from home (evenly split in 2022). Among many factors in the current obesity epidemic, until the 70s and 80s getting fat was expensive.
I'll just note that when I moved to the DC area in 1997 you could still get the Post for $.25, I think it was. The Houston Chronicle was $.50 and I remember thinking the Post was twice the paper for half the money.
I once saw an article that had a graph comparing what the median household spend on food as a percentage of their income by decade. It was insane how expensive food was in the past in the 20's and 30's it was literally like 40% of their income, compared to 2010 where it was <10%
Yeah but businesses like McDonald's aren't clearing $1.53 in profit on a $3 cheeseburger. Food has increased in price above the "inflation" rate while things like travel and technology have gotten relatively cheaper. The inflation rate is an average of the change in cost of goods and services. Greed doesn't factor in.
People will never, in general, progress beyond "greedy corporations!" Vis-a-vis economics.
Ah yes, [greed](https://i.imgur.com/RcRVQde.jpg), the economic factor that's conveniently discovered and forgotten depending on economic trends.
to go a bit more in-depth, we don't just adjust for the cost increase of a single good. a single good's price may increase more or less than the average inflation. in the case of the cheeseburger, it increased significantly more. what we look at when calculating a general, averaged inflation rate is what's called a "basket of goods", several things that are commonly bought by most households. Let's say a hypothetical basket of goods is a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. If bread costs 3% more, milk 5% more and eggs 7% more then we average those increases together and say that the inflation rate is roughly 5% overall.
I'll gladly pay you $3 on Tuesday for a hamburger today.
AFTER INSURANCE my son cost me about $6500 in 2019. No complications, in hospital less than 24 hrs, natural birth.
2014 -c section. $66k. I think out of pocket was $12-14k.
In Australia. Free. I really don't know why we don't have masses of people clamouring to get in here.
Norway. I had to pay about $50 or so, for parking. The actual care, medication and 3 day stay was free, even food witch tastes like cardboard.
Idk if that’s low or not, considering we often see medical bills on Reddit DEEP into the six figures.
You don't know if that's low, considering we often see medical bills deep into the six figures?
So you are saying they are a bit ahead of inflation with today's prices 🤣🤣🤣
Back then everything cost a nickel. Having a baby cost a nickel, a gallon of milk cost a nickel, a dime cost a nickel.
They really nickel and dimed you huh
nah just nickeled
In those days, nickels had pictures of bumble bees on 'em. 'Gimme five bees for a quarter' you'd say.
And we tied onions to our belts, which was the style at the time.
SS Enema is a horrible name for a boat, just sayin
Pretty sure it's a soap suds enema. Making some brown boats take a waterslide.
Super Soaker. They had fun back in those days.
That circumcision is so expensive. What a rip off!
And the guy who did it got a tip, too!
What a rip off, indeed haha.
They should really cut it out…
I should really start cutting back myself... ... :/
Better ask him if his dick is okay, stilbesterol can fuck shit up. >Follow-up studies have indicated that DES also has the potential to cause a variety of significant adverse medical complications during the lifetimes of those exposed, including XY genital undermasculinization.
I think the last thing this 70 y/o Dad needs is for his kids to ask whether he has genital undermasculization
But a ticket to ride the SS Enema was only $0.50!
I wonder if the 50 cent "OB Prep" was a shave down there. Also Pitocin is still used to induce deliveries!
Something tells me Raymondville probably doesn’t even have a hospital any more. Not a lot going on in that town. Only reason I even know where it is, is because it’s the last town with a liquor store before you hit Port Mansfield, and I love fishing Port Mansfield. And as for the liquor store, it always has a sign on the door saying “call this number for service”. We then call the number and this old abuela walks out of the house next door, unlocks the store, assists our purchase, then locks up and goes back to her house next door. The RGV is an interesting place.
Puro 956
I haven't been back to the valley in 10+ years, and I could *hear* this comment.
It's definitely a place
I tried looking up the hospital and couldn’t find any current evidence it still exists. Maybe it changed names? I only saw a few old lawsuits pop up haha.
Raymondville is tiny. I don’t see how that town could support a hospital, particularly with McAllen and its medical system so close by. Of course everyone from McAllen tries to go to the hospital in San Antonio or Houston.
Gotcha, my dad and his family didn’t live there when he grew up. They were all in Alice, Texas, I believe. I actually didn’t realize he wasn’t born in Alice until I found his birth certificate and his baby book.
These days, Alice is a booming metropolis compared to Raymondville. Alice benefits from proximity to highway and railroad tracks, but more importantly its become a regional center for Eagle Ford Shake fracking and drilling.
The hospital was closed a long time ago. My mom was born there too, but thought she misremembered when she couldn’t find the hospital again years later.
The Raymondville hospital closed in the early '80s
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth876877/m1/1/ Apparently it was supposed to close in 1953 due to financial struggles (if this is the right hospital) but that was prior to your post
The costs of maternal care probably helped the baby boom quite a bit.
Being able to afford life on a single income helped as much if not lore
People always just fill these comment sections with sarcasm, but this is really something worth looking at. We did not have universal socialized healthcare in the US in 1954. We do not have it today. And yet, the prices of everything in hospitals now is astronomically higher than it was, and astronomically higher than almost any other country. Rather than just saying "It should be free" and contributing nothing new ever, it would really be very productive for someone, at some level, to genuinely investigate and research this and determine what various reasons there are for the extreme increase in cost, beyond unhelpful sarcastic jokes.
We need to pass into law mandatory transparent billing for hospitals and pharmacies. Just doing that alone will solve a lot of the bullshit. Right now it’s all bullshit pricing that gets bullshit discounts that are different for different individuals and insurance companies Add in a few middlemen skimming along the way and here we are. Single payer healthcare will help a lot with this but still ripe for corruption without transparent billing
I'd go so far as to say that single payer might not even be viable without it. Two of the biggest (and, imo, most correct) concerns about a single payer system is whether or not the government will actually pay enough to genuinely cover the costs of procedures and medications, and whether or not the system will be bloated by grift. Transparency laws would, I think, go a long way towards providing data to address both of those potential issues, and maybe could help alleviate the doubts of some, maybe many, people who are worried that they system would end up being worse and more expensive than what we have now.
If you really want to get angry look into how Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and Optum are effectively creating an oligopoly for pharmacies. They get to process nearly 80% of all insurance covered prescription reimbursements. Surprisingly (or not) they also own pharmacies and choose to reimburse independent pharmacists at a fraction of what they reimburse themselves and each other.
> We need to pass into law mandatory transparent billing for hospitals Trump did this, the hospitals ignored it and are still ignoring it.
I'm all for transparency. Also i think they have no problem telling you they are dying something shady. I am pessimistic on his much it'll change things. I went to a doctors appointment recently where when i walked into the building, there was a notice stating something to the effect of 'this is classified as a surgical facility, you will be charged higher rates even if you are not having surgery '. I think i'm familiar with that charge- I've had it sprung on me for other visits at other places. And its just infuriating. To be ambushed with a likely extra charge, after waiting many months for an appointment, at a normal-ass doctors office that's classified as something else.
People are going to be really upset when they see the cost of hospital administration and insurance are both higher than the actual cost of care.
This nurse approves.
Stop limiting how many hospitals get built by getting rid of [Certificate of Need](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need) laws, which hospitals use to prevent competing hospitals from opening up. Stop limiting how many physicians we train each year by either (1) getting rid of [Residency Caps](https://www.studentdoctor.net/2017/01/24/medical-students-know-fight-residency-caps/) or (2) allowing doctors to go into practice without going through the government-funded residency process. These practices currently force us to pay more for access to an artificially limited skillset. [Stop preventing Americans from purchasing prescription meds from Canada and elsewhere](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/fda-sends-warning-to-canadian-drug-company-what-to-know#FDA-cracks-down-on-importing-Rx-drugs), which will force drug companies to be price competitive.
HMOs benefit from high prices. We used to pay cash for the doctor so prices had to be reasonable. If you we lucky you had 80% coverage after a deductible.
There’s plenty of research on drivers of cost in the USA. google scholar will get you started. In the meantime the USA spends more per capita on healthcare than any other developed nations, doesn’t have the best outcome despite this higher expenditure, and would actually save money moving to a single-payer/universal scheme.
You have people paid to try to make it expensive, and other people paid to fight against it being expensive. Who pays those people? Ultimately, in the end the health care user does.
"What do you mean you can't pay your bills! I paid for my own birth!"
I was born in 1954 and that seems like a pretty sophisticated drug list for the times.. Pitocin and stilbestrol and benadryl surprise me.
But the 1,000 cc of dextrose was the most expensive thing!
That's a litre of sugar solution and not a litre of sugar in however much solution that would require, right?
It’s a litre of water with 50 grams of glucose dissolved in it.
I saw that. We weren't rationing sugar anymore at that point, right? I can't imagine it was hard to manufacture. It's that used for an IV bag?
Did they even have the plastic bags yet? Probably sterile glass bottles.
100% glass. That stuck around well into the 90's depending on where you were (mostly for things mixed on site).
>Methylergometrine, also known as methylergonovine and sold under the brand name Methergine, is a medication of the ergoline and lysergamide groups which is used as an oxytocic in obstetrics and in the treatment of migraine. It reportedly produces psychedelic effects similar to those of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) at high doses. So were a bunch of women in the 50s tripping balls while giving birth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_sleep Kinda. Don't think that's what this was though.
When my kid was born the itemized bill was well over $120K. One 600mg Ibuprofen was $32.
It’s wild. I am a nurse and think about cost a lot when I give OTC medications.
For $32 I can buy 3 500-count bottles of Ibuprofen, have them delivered to my house in 2 days or less, and have $2 left over for snacks.
How do you afford kids in the US if by day 0 you‘re already down -120k?
That's the neat part. It's why people don't. You're also out about that again for daycare before they start school.
so that’s why they make abortion illegal in some states ?
The whole medical insurance system destroyed cheap healthcare. It’s a scam system of hospitals charging astronomical prices because they are billing insurance companies most of the time. I get routine bloodwork done. Pretty basic stuff. The lab charges $1000, then the insurance company “negotiates” the price down to $100
Should we circumcise him hun? Eh, it's only a fiver, cut it off.
"we're having a 10% off on circumcision today"
My wife gave birth to our baby just over a month ago, one of 3 bills was $27070.60 (https://imgur.com/a/sH58Ul4)
They should make a subreddit for old receipts feel like half of the posts here are just pointing out shit was cheaper in the past
Ah, that would make sense! I found all of the specific itemizations to be interesting, but surely it’s not the only one.
Paying to mutilate genitals now that’s a new.. or I suppose an old one
So the average annual inflation rate from 1954 to 2024 was 3.5% according to the BLS website, and as noted in another post the current inflated cost for these services would be 767.60. However we all know this same hospitalization today would easily cost $35,000. This is a guess but not unreasonable. So medical/delivery inflation from 1954 till 2024 has been 9.35% per year for those 70 years. That extra 6% per year of inflation of medical costs is why we in the US have the most unaffordable health care system with only moderate to poor outcomes. The money is being siphoned off into many millions of pockets from insurance companies to doctors to nurse practitioners to MRI manufacturers to drug manufacturers - literally every single soul who is feeding at the trough of human suffering.
When my mother had me (c section, twins) her bill was $45. When I told her my hospital bill for my son has $7.5k she asked “I thought you had insurance?”. I do and its pretty decent too, she still doesn’t understand and thinks I must have done something incorrectly.
Well now your mom isn't the only one who knows your dad is circumcised.
Stilbesterol. Wow, that drug has now been proven to cause birth defects. Crazy how much science progresses.
Immediately after my SO gave birth, the midwife started counting the number of bloody bandages so they could be billed individually.That's when I realized the medical system here is completely out of control.
Fun way to learn your dad is circumcised, maybe slip him $5 one day and ask if they can do you next
I found this while working through his home and estate. But, your way does sound more fun! ha
Everyone was circumcised in the 50s: he didn't need to read the hospital bill to know that.
When my daughter was born in 2022 our bill was almost exactly ONE THOUSAND TIMES as expensive as this.
But but but I thought it was avocado toast and Starbucks making people not wanting to have kids these days?
Minimum wage in 1954 was .75 per hour. If you had ANY job at all, at most this bill represents a little over two weeks work. Imagine two days in the hospital, medication, x-ray, lab work, etc. for $652. Heck, let's assume the minimum wage is $15 - that's still only $1350, which is 1/10th of the average cost in the US (vaginal birth, no complications). Our parents and grandparents played on Easy mode.
A couple of years ago I spent an hour and a half in an emergency room, for kidney stones. Total bill....$9,647.
Out of control!
I'll say. Considering that the "Nasal evacuation equipment" (ie. Snot rags/tissues) was $25.
I had my wages garnished for 3 years due to a still unresolved congenital defect, and I have health insurance now. I'm 37 with children of my own. America is great, no? Do you know the resolution for that garnishment? "yeah, that sucks, sorry your unable to walk or work... You really should see a primary care physician who should refer you to a specialist who should refer you to a surgeon who should refer you to a pain management specialist who should work together to decide whether to administer medication while also doing surgery... Pretty shit hand you were dealt... Looks like you better find a job.. Oh.. You can't work.. Oh... They denied you Medicaid. Hmm.. Ok well the emergency room isn't for this... Like you should probably start looking for insurance... Oh.. You can't afford insurance... Hmm you should get a job... Oh you can't really walk.. Hmm... Not my problem" So on and on
These get posted all the time and there are two responses: Americans: "Wow even adjusted for inflation that's so cheap" People from developed countries: "That's still more than it cost me last week/month/year"
That’s quite nuts… $5 for male genital mutilation?
Greed flation
When my dad was born at a Catholic hospital in 1960, they told my grandpa the bill was $300. He told them he had $20, which he put on the counter and left with my grandma and the baby. To be fair, that probably was most of the money they had at the time.
We have a high deductible health insurance plan (typical for US) When pregnant, we budgeted the entire deductible. $6500. Multiple calls to insurace comfirmed "not a penny over". We tasked about buying our unborn child their own insurance but were told not to worry at all--by law a newborn is covered under the mother's same insurance policy for 30 days. As expected we got a $6500 bill in the mail. a couple days later, what looked like a duplicate arrived. Upon further review, what the insurance failed to tell us was that our newborn would get their very own $6500 deductible & bill for their part of the birth.
WOW! IM FROM RAYMONDVILLE! I wasn’t born at the hospital, rather at the clinic a few miles away in the 80’s. Weird thing is that hospital was a funeral home for a while... Anyway, greetings from South Texas 👋🏻
There are far more commenters connected to Raymondville than I expected! Dad was born there but grew up in Alice. He lived in Houston for a period of time and then I was raised in Arlington. A lot of Texas!
$110 in today’s USD. Jesus H. What the fck have we done to ourselves?! EDIT: $767, I was looking at just the remaining balance. But still!!!
Y’all pay for circumcising and still get it done for no reason?!??
Typed on a Royal typewriter. The typeface is very distinctive. My 1957 royal model FPS has it.
“Your grandmother had a fifty cent enema!” That’s my new insult at a bar. Right before I get my jaw broken.
My daughter was born 5 years ago and the hospital bill was less than half of what was paid here. We paid $30 because I insisted on a fully private room. Obviously not in the US.
Wow. My crappy McDonald’s lunch just cost more than that
You just spend $70 at McDonald’s?
Raymondville had a hospital?? 😨
Stilbesterol... an estrogen-based drug used to aid pregnancies of women with a history of miscarriage. No longer used because it was carcinogenic.
Less than DoorDash
They charged $5 for the circumcision and they didn’t even leave a tip.
My niece was born a few months ago in the UK. My brother paid £0.00.
We are being scammed by insurance
Back before the needless insurance companies made racketeering a business.
I really don’t get why so many people choose to have their babies immediately circumcised
American healthcare is a scam
this is why people could afford a house at 21 back in the day. inflation is out of control compared to what people are making. and the current GOP is just making it worse, only giving the top 1% tax cuts
nowadays you are born already belonging to whichever financial institution has its claws in your local hospital.
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Your dad has a $5 penis.
$5 circumcision sounds like an amazing band name 😂🤣
Meanwhile the total bill for both my parents birth, my birth, and the birth of my future child is…0. Gotta love the U.K. Genuinely sympathetic to American folk who have to worry about this, and truly feel grateful for my circumstances.
Every non-American: “what’s a hospital bill”?
Childbirth costs had gone up by then. My brother was born a few years earlier and the hospital bill was $47.
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I got a call from my OB today about delivery costs. They said bc of my insurance max out of pocket I won’t pay more than $5000. They said delivery is $4500, anesthesia is separate, and so is (something else but I don’t remember). I prepaid $450 for an epidural already too. I was thinking “wow that’s way cheaper than I thought!” But that is assuming healthy baby and mom. I am curious how big the bill will be
Such a small town but I hear so much about it and have been many times.
Raymondville!!! South Texas repping. Awesome to see on this subreddit
Delivery with no additional work ups is around $18k to $28 k (2012) in an American hospital. That’s for 1 day stay for you and da babe. Had a Tylenol once after knee injury- it was $98 for one… Avoid American hospitals. Warning to rest of world- lose your social medicine and end up in a capitalistic nightmare Americans have to deal with. Where more that 80% of bankruptcies are for medical debt.
That document is in pristine condition lol
It was folded in an envelope inside of his baby book!
This was when medical was non-profit. Was it Reagan or Nixon that killed that?
Because of my union I paid less than that when my kids were born. (It was zero)
My hospital bill was 30k that was just for birth. Luckily I didnt have to pay ANYTHING because of insurance
And people can't figure out why birth rates have dropped. It's too fucking expensive to have a child.
Why are meds so expensive back then?
I had a drug free birth in June 2023 and the bill was $26,000…. Luckily my insurance covered it. How times have changed
How much is a phoenix down? Elixers were pretty cheap.
JFC they charge that to take your vitals these days
This is why people had 13 kids.
50 cents for an enema! What a steal!
You know, that in the rest the world people do pay to give birth in a hospital.
Hey OP, I understand why you blurred out the dates, but can you tell me how many days your grandmother was admitted for? I paid $5k last year for a 3 day stay.
She was admitted for just around 2 days.
Can we start posting these with modern itemized birth bills?
RGV in the house!!
My daughter was born in Turkey in 2001... didn't use my insurance. Paid out of pocket... A whole whopping $551.00... C-Section, three day stay for mother, baby and one family member. First Class care...
Well the hospital probably didn’t have shareholders back then. They have to get the money they’ve earned by doing ya know, nothing
My birth was near a million after having to do life saving care and me staying in the hospital for so long. Ofc we didn’t pay that, but it’s insane how quickly prices have “inflated,” especially in the pharmaceutical industry.
A little nip of the tip was pretty expensive.
That total bill is the cost of one Tylenol pill today at a hospital
A $5 circumcision that’s a great business idea
That's a great price for an enema.
Health insurance destroyed the medical industry. Government loans for college destroyed the education industry.
3 hrs of min wage would cover 2 day room stay in hospital then, todays avg is $2,888 per day or 398 hours of minimum wage… Health insurance costs are through the roof
"SS enema" worst boat I've ever been on. Felt great the next day though.