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- Title
Perinatal care payments topped $25 billion in 1989, but they fell $2 billion short of meeting...
- Authors
Schorr, E.
- Abstract
This article presents information on the cost of perinatal care payments in the U.S. Earlier studies of spending for maternal or perinatal care have valued perinatal care resources according to provider charges. Such estimates have been flawed, however, because over the last decade third-party payers have increasingly either refused to pay full charges or negotiated discounts. Given that maternity care is a well-documented source of uncompensated care, using charges to estimate direct expenditures almost surely led to overestimates. The overall cost of maternity and infant health care in 1989 was $27.8 billion, or $6,850 per mother-infant pair. Payments for this care were estimated to total $25.4 bil- lion, or about $6,250 per mother-infant pair. These included payments made directly by patients or on their behalf by third parties, but did not include a value for direct delivery care or uncompensated care, which accounted for the $2.4 billion shortfall in relation to costs. Payments for maternity and for infant health thus represented about 4.5% of personal health care spending by all Americans, and about 7% of health care spending by the nonelderly population.
- Subjects
UNITED States; MEDICAL care costs; MEDICAL care; MATERNAL health services; NEWBORN infant care; HEALTH
- Publication
Family Planning Perspectives, 1995, Vol 27, Issue 3, p133
- ISSN
0014-7354
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2136117