Babies and Medical Services on the Cheap
Today’s Guest Column is again from Vicki Indiati. Thanks, Vicki for your continuing support of the site through your interesting articles.
I was sitting in the local Barangay office today and noticed one of the secretaries was pregnant. In fact she is due in about two weeks. We got to talking about expenses involving having a baby here. I was very surprised at how inexpensive it is. Perhaps this is one of the best and perhaps last bargains in the Philippines along with other medical services.
Doctor Visits
$2.50 – $7.50
Ultrasound
Regular - $22.00
4D – $90.00
Baby Delivery
Government Hospital
Doctor and Deliver Room Fees – $97.00
Cesarean Delivery – $122.00
Private Room – $9.75
I started asking around and I found many foreigners whose wives and girl friends had deliveries in public hospitals and are were quite satisfied with the service and professionalism
Private Hospital
Doctor and Delivery Room Fees – $244.00 to $490.00
Cesarean – $1,951
Private Room – $46.00
Pretty amazing huh!!!
I then decided to check out the cost in the USA and here is what I came up with. Normal Delivery - $8,000. Cesarean - $10,000. I have purposely left out insurance issues as they pertain to these costing due to the fact that some people have it and some don’t.
While we are on the subject of health related expenses here is another example.
My brother-in-law just had a massive heart attack. He was admitted to Makati Medical which is one of the top hospitals in the Philippines. Imagine this. He was in a private ICU room hooked up to all sorts of monitoring machines 3 Cat Scans, 3 MRI’s; Angiogram; Double Angioplasty; Drugs/Medicines up the Wazoo; No less than 3 of the top US schooled Heart, Vascular, and Internal Medical doctors available in the Philippines; Food, Nurses; and more This went on for 45 days. If you can imagine, his total bill was 2.7 million or $66,000 USD. This same scenario in the states and your guess is as good as mine but I would venture to say over $500,000. I think just a semi-private bed in an American hospital is $1,000 a day.
I also had a heart attack here back in 2005 and spent 8 days in Makati Medical Hospital 4 of them in ICU and my bill was only $7,000 and I was afforded pretty much the same soup to nuts benefits as my brother-in-law.
The moral of the story is the Philippines seems to be an okay place to have a baby, get sick in or seek out medical attention. I hear that Thailand is even better and cheaper.
[...] Babies and Medical Services on the Cheap My brother-in-law just had a massive heart attack. He was admitted to Makati Medical which is one of the top hospitals in the Philippines. Imagine this. He was in a private ICU room hooked up to all sorts of monitoring machines 3 Cat … [...]
I am a midwife and have delivered several babies here in the Philippines and helped a lot of pregnant women, both here and in the States.
We are working on finding the best and most economical option for one of our ‘daughters’ who is due to have a baby at the end of March. It has been a long time since I delivered a baby, and she is very close to me, so I am looking into all the options. She and her husband have saved up P20,000, but I am hoping they don’t have to spend it all. Births in hospitals here are like births in the 70’s in the States. No husbands allowed, wait for the doctor, routine episiotomies, keep the baby and mom apart for hours and hours (waiting for the pediatrician to come on duty) and give the baby formula in the meantime (at least this is true in private hospitals, in spite of the pro-breast feeding posters). Lying in hospitals or clinics are usually cheaper and the kind of service you get depends on whether you are delivered by a doctor or a midwife. You get less medical interference from the midwives. Anesthesia use is not very common in hospitals.
As you can tell, I am a proponent of as natural a birth as possible, with breast feeding on demand as soon as possible. This is the best for both mother and baby. A birth without anesthesia (or childbirth preparation) is almost guaranteed, but with lots of fiddling with the process. There are many trained midwives who work in more rural areas doing home births. they are trained to recognize problems and transfer to the hospital when more medical care is needed. Baranggay health clinics provide free per-natal care.
So this is a little more information for those who are interested in this topic!
[...] Here’s another interesting post I read today by Guest Blog [...]
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
You will be surprised to know that I have been able to change some of the things you mention as it pertains to deliveries in general.
Regarding my wifes upcoming delivery next week
1. I will be allowed in the delivery room. I simply drew up a letter to the Hospital Medical Director and Head Nurse and had my obgyn talk to them about this in advance endorsing my request.
2. I will have a birth certificate that will reflect the babies first name, our made up middle name and my last name. This is obviously normal for foreigners and in fact a new law has been passed here supporting this departure from normal Philippine prootcols of the mothers maiden name as the babies middle name. In any event the US embassy (and probably others) will make whatever changes you want later so it really doesn’t matter if you get right down to it.
3. We are anti religious and we did not want any indication of a religon on the birth certifricate or elsewhere.This too will be honored
ADVANCED planning on all this is key for it to take place
Hi
You will be surprised to know that I have been able to change some of the things you mention as it pertains to deliveries in general.
Regarding my wifes upcoming delivery next week
1. I will be allowed in the delivery room. I simply drew up a letter to the Hospital Medical Director and Head Nurse and had my obgyn talk to them about this in advance endorsing my request.
2. I will have a birth certificate that will reflect the babies first name, our made up middle name and my last name. This is obviously normal for foreigners and in fact a new law has been passed here supporting this departure from normal Philippine prootcols of the mothers maiden name as the babies middle name. In any event the US embassy (and probably others) will make whatever changes you want later so it really doesn’t matter if you get right down to it.
3. We are anti religious and we did not want any indication of a religon on the birth certifricate or elsewhere.This too will be honored
4. We requested and it was okayed as well that the baby be breast fed within 4 hours of delivery
ADVANCED planning on all this is key for it to take place
Bob:
Thank you for posting this! This is exactly the kind of specific information a prospective Philippine immigrant is looking for. I hope you include more articles like this in the future. Some suggestions might be detailed costs of furnishing an apartment or house, a trip to the supermarket or drugstore, a family outing to a restaurant and a movie theater and a day trip to Samal Island. Please include detailed costs and any Philippine specific sutoms or cultural niceties that may be observed.
Hi David S. - Thanks for leaving your comment. First, I want to make it clear that I am not the writer of this article, it was written by Vicki. I do understand the value of doing something like a detailed list of the cost of furnishing your house or apartment. However, there are also problems in doing that. The main problem is that every one of us is different, with different tastes. I can easily find a sofa for $100, and can just as easily find one for $5,000. For some people they would be perfectly happy with the $100 sofa, but that would not satisfy me. While I don’t need or want a $5,000 sofa, I want something a little nicer than the $100 sofa, if you know what I mean.
So, yes, I will try to do some things like this, but I also think it is important to understand that the same info may not apply to everybody.
Thanks again, David, for sharing your views!
Thanks for the reply Bob. I was aware that you weren’t the author. I just wanted you to take consider my suggestions when you select topics. As the website ownerI imagine you have some influence on what gets posted from time to time (maybe not).
I realize tastes in things like furniture vary. What I’m interested in is selection and qulaity (entirely subjective and up to the author) rather than trying to construct an actual budget.
Keep up the good work. I enjoy visiting your site.
P.S. Please consider adding a spell checker to the reader comment section of your website. There are a number of excellent ones available.
Regards,
David S. - gramatically and spelling challenged
Hi David S - Thanks for your note, and I do understand what you are saying. Regarding furniture, Feyma wrote a piece last year about high end furniture, including prices, you might want to look at that. But, I do understand that you are not specifically asking about furniture, but that is just an example. We do try to list such stuff, and will continue doing that in the future too!
I’ll look into the spell check plug-in. This site is using Wordpress-MU (Multi-user) and cannot always use regular WP plugins, so as long as I can find one that will work with MU, I see no problem adding it!
Take care!
Hi,
Can US citizens living in the Philippines contract for good comprehensive health insurance?
–James
Hi James -Yes, I know that you can get policies from PhilHealth, Blue Cross and PruLife. I am sure that there are other policies as well.
I recently had surgery at Makati Medical center on my hand after a failed surgery in the U.S. last year. The total cost was 1/4th or less of the U.S. price. The care was much better and was also able to have a health checkup and dental work done at the same time. Priviate room with cable tv, three good meals a day and excellent care from all the doctors and staff was very affordable. The rate for the room was P1650. They even sent an IT guy to my room to help configure my laptop for their wifi. I was thinking of going to Thailand, but wasn’t sure about the communication with the doctors there.