Really!?!?

It's been awhile since I've posted a really?!?! post, but this warrants one. I'm sooooo angry with insurance companies, and worse yet, the entire medical industry. That doesn't mean I'm not thankful for the latest medical technologies and research, I am. I'm talking about our recent experience with having a baby, and the bills!! The experience itself was wonderful, it's just those confusing, outrageous bills that come in the mail constantly after that are causing me grief. I won't go on about what portion we paid, but let's just say it is over triple what we paid three years ago to have Isaac, and that wasn't cheap! AND, that's with the same exact insurance plan (supposedly a great plan) that we had with Isaac. I had the most uncomplicated birth/recovery imaginable, with no specialists involved, unmedicated, I could have done it myself almost, yet between Sam and I, the bill was over 11,000 dollars for my prenatal/birth (what insurance and we paid combined) Something seems amiss here. ACK!!! Looking at the itemized bill from the hospital is almost laughable.... Lucky for our insurance company that we are only about $500.00 away from meeting our family's maximum out of pocket for the year, otherwise we would go get MRI's for all of us, be screened for every possible disease, get prosthetic third limbs, and whatever other expensive procedure we could get! I kid, but seriously....I don't know how the un/underinsured do it. I know the cost for this is nothing compared to long term/life threatening illnesses, but that's kind of the point...why so much when there was nothing medically wrong? Treating pregnancy and childbirth as an illness...that's a whole other soapbox....
I'm glad we are not planning on a third child, we'd have to start saving now! That was my venting/rant for the year (okay, maybe summer :-). Having said all that, I would pay a million bucks for this guy....