I have joked a time or two with new mom friends that it would be glorious if we could leave the hospital for a few days after delivering a baby just to recover while the nurses in the maternity ward take care of the child. Never again. For one mom in Greece, the joke has become a reality!
According to reports out of the country that's quickly becoming infamous for financial instability, one new mom didn't have enough money to pay for her C-section. So the hospital decided to hold her newborn baby hostage until she came up with the cash!
Fortunately someone with some common sense has since intervened and helped the woman being identified only as Anna set up a payment plan for the approximately $1,500 bill so she could leave the hospital with her baby in her arms. But the fact that the threat was made at all makes it hard to imagine ever trusting that hospital, doesn't it?
These people are in the business of helping women bring human life into the world? Really? They certainly don't seem to have a handle on what "life" means.
Babies are not products. Going into the hospital to deliver your child is not like walking into the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk. A cashier has every right to tell you that you can't walk out with that plastic jug until you hand over the cash to pay for it. That's how business works.
But babies aren't milk jugs. They're human beings. That's why hospitals can't work like traditional businesses. They deal with lives, not "stuff." And yet, this hospital was claiming a baby's life is equal to the cost of a C-section. And here I thought people were priceless.
What should hospitals be doing when new mothers can't pay their bills?
Image via nerissa's ring/Flickr