> It's insane how difficult it is currently to figure out how much even routine and planned operations like delivering a child will cost, and as a result people don't bother to even try
In my real-life experience, that is false. When my wife was pregnant we asked the doctor if we could pay upfront. She said yes, gave us a price, and explained what that would cover. We paid her; the delivery was at the hospital, and everything went well.
Was the doctor's quoted price the same as the all-in price? In our case, the OB's bill was something like 10% of the final total, which was close to 6 figures, despite being bog standard.
Your total seems to be one to two orders of magnitude greater than what we paid. We fully prepaid, and there were no complications. However, I wasn't talking about cost but replying to the assertion that one could not forecast costs.
I replied to, "It's insane how difficult it is currently to figure out how much even routine and planned operations like delivering a child will cost, and as a result people don't bother to even try". Your post seemed to refute that as well.
In my real-life experience, that is false. When my wife was pregnant we asked the doctor if we could pay upfront. She said yes, gave us a price, and explained what that would cover. We paid her; the delivery was at the hospital, and everything went well.