1500 for prenatal care...not where I live. Maybe 4000 or so.
There is NO way that this woman got out of this with even a 4,000 dollar bill. A regular birth is probably 4K... without a c-section. And she sounds like she has had MULTIPLE pregnancies, she has had two kids of her own, 3 babies for other people... this is her sixth baby. somewhere along the way, she's probably had a c-section (research statistics say, in our c-section happy society!!). so, I bet she was a c-section or a repeat c-section (but i could always be wrong!!! Michelle Dugger, mom of 17 had her baby vaginally, right????!!!) c-sections cost more than regular births. plus you add in costs for the care of the baby... and if she had to come to the hospital for any prenatal monitoring, if she had any complications... lab work... ANYTHING... i mean, wow... the bill could get big quick, you know? and if she's been having her "job" as a surrogate (this was her FOURTH baby!!!)... and now she's been out of work now for a while... i wonder who really is paying for this? the state? or does she have another job and have insurance (and WOULD IT COVER A SURROGATE BABY!!!)
what kind of reproductive technology did she have to use to concieve? was there any at all (i mean, come on?) or did they use a turkey baster? otherwise, ANY doctors visits, ect WERE NOT covered by this woman's "insurance"... they would have been out of pocket for this family... so all her costs for this child would have been MUCH more than 1500 bucks... JUST TO GET PREGNANT. or were they billed to the surrogate? even an insemination... carefully timed... would have been much more than 1500 bucks you know. that stuff is expensive!! and a regular birth is much more than that for her to pay (1500 dollars)!! But, doing it on the cheap by not using a donor egg... thus not protecting themselves (this allowed the surrogate to keep the baby because it was biologically HER baby, and by state law, this father only had the same rights as a sperm donor... she would actually be giving this baby up for adoption to this family).
And WTF were they doing by not researching her in the first place? Why would you EVER pick a surrogate that smoked, then try to get on to her after the fact (oh sorry, we own you now... you have to stop!!!??!??!?!?!?!?!) Also, if this was her 6th pregnancy... most people would place that as kind of a higher risk... not an emergency by any means... but with that does come with a certain amount of increased risk during the pregnancy and birth (especially to the mother).
Most surrogates are paid between 20,000 and 35,000 dollars... some much higher. And most of the time, a signifigant portion of this is paid up front to the surrogate... especially during the time conception is occuring. That is a really hard time for the surrogate and her family, when hormones are running high (injections to get and maintain a pregnancy, losses, ect). Then amounts throughout the pregnancy for upkeep (travel to physicians, clothing, high risk OB appointments... some surrogants end up with multiple gestations), then at the end after the birth. I was reading one case online where the really nice family that had a surrogate even offered to pay to have their surrogate go to couseling for a pre-determined set number of visits after the birth. The interview they had said that they had a really good relationship with their surrogate, and the surrogate had seen their twins about 1 to 2 times a year (I do not even think that the surrogate was biologically related to these people, but they were just really good people). They treated her like an extended member of the family.
While I have never had to consider this, I have always thought that this was an EXTREMELY interesting medical / legal issue. However, this couple has COMPLETELY lost my sympathy. Just something about them. THey seem very presumpuous (sp?). They really got themselves into some deep doo-doo with this one... they should have taken better steps to protect themselves if they were going to tread on such contraversial water, you know? Not just throw sperm... and CHILDREN... around like that. If I EVER thought that there was a chance that someone else could be carrying my hubbys child... by MY choice.... and I wouldn't be bringing that baby home... I wouldn't ever risk it unless I had an IRON proof case. And they could have done that by just using a donor egg!!!