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I think most Europeans would be shocked by the cost of having a baby in the US. See 'A typical American birth costs as much as delivering a (UK) royal baby' [1]

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/23/a-typica...

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Is that right!? Wow, I'm honestly surprised it's that low. As an American, I totally would have expected it to be at least double that, but most likely more. I haven't had a kid yet, but my wife had outpatient surgery a couple of years ago to remove a cyst. I hung out in the waiting room and we were out of there before lunchtime. Our insurance was billed nearly $100,000. We (thankfully) have good insurance (tied to my employer, of course), and we hit our annual out-of-pocket max with that one operation.

There are two points here.

1. The actual cost

2. What is charged

As a father of two here in the UK and one birth requiring serious surgery I have no clue at all what the cost was. Why? Because our National Health Service did not send me a bill because the charge was zero.

Cost? All the medical staff were going to be paid anyway, all equipment was there and powered on, all drugs used were already budgeted for. So the 'cost' was all part of the service.

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