Hospital Charges Mom of Triplets Over $1 Million for Hospital Stay, Sparks Debate on Healthcare

TikToker and new mom Kyrsten Brown (@the_brown_triplets) was hospitalized for eleven days before giving birth to three babies simultaneously. Because triplets are usually born at much lighter weights than their single baby counterparts, oftentimes they require additional care post-partum.

Neonatal intensive care units specialize in assisting with the proper development of babies born underweight or prematurely. They're given additional oxygen and are closely monitored to ensure that they hit their target weights before they're allowed to go home with their parents or guardians.

In a recent post, Krysten highlighted just how much money she was charged to deliver three babies that required NICU treatment, and it resulted in a bill over $1.3 million, which doesn't include her own 11 day stay at the hospital prior to giving birth.

She says in the clip: "If you want to know how much it costs to have triplets in the United States without insurance listen up. Jaymes was in the NICU for 31 days and she needed a little bit of oxygen. She needed photo light therapy and she was just there to feed and grow she was two pounds fourteen ounces when she was born."

She then moved away from the camera to reveal the hospital bill behind her on a green screen. "They charged us $447,037.53." But that was just for one of her kids.

"Polly was in the NICU for 32 days. 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."

If you can see where this is going, Polly was also slapped with an astronomically high bill for her stay at the hospital: $542,785.39.

The TikToker continued, "Baskyn did the same thing as James except he was in the NICU for thirty-five days, he just needed a little extra time. So they charged us $481,261.12. This doesn't even begin to cover my eleven-day hospital stay before the babies were born."

Throngs of TikTokers offered up helpful hints at "negotiating" her bill down. Multiple people suggested that she ask for an "itemized" bill as this would "drastically" reduce the amount of money the hospital would charge her.

Presumably, because the healthcare facility would actually have to put down all of the services that were performed on her and the her children, and justify the dollar amount the hospital is requesting. However, not all states require care facilities by law to fork over itemized receipts.

If you're worrying about unpaid medical bills affecting your credit score, you may want to know that according to Capital One medical service providers rarely report non-payment to credit bureaus. Now they may sell your debt to collection agencies in order to get some of their money back. If that happens then yes, your credit score will, unfortunately, be affected.

The United States packs the steepest healthcare costs in the whole world by a very large margin. Yet, despite these astronomically gratuitous charges to citizens, the quality of care received is also worse in many instances when compared to other developed countries with either free or much more affordable healthcare.

In fact, when pitted against 11 developed countries, the United States ranked dead last according to AJMC. Meaning that we spend more and get less. It's like buying a new Jeep Grand Wagoneer for $100,000 when there are a ridiculous number of options that are better in every way.