<prompt> Human: 18 June: Edit - lots of good discussion here. Glad that so much information is out there for consideration.In reading a few comments on the thread about the 19 year old soon to be father I saw things like this:With a child birth, even if everything goes well and as planned you will hit your max out of pocket amount which is typically around 10k... Each of my children had about a 10,000 dollar hospital bill just for their birth. Thankfully I did qualify for Medicaid and it was paid in full. But yeah it would have been bad if I didnt...We had not terrible insurance, and having a kid still took about 10 of my pay check for 2 years to pay off my deductiblesI am not a rich man.I know its just a data point, but we paid 258 out of pocket for the birth of my son via Kaiser Permanentes HMO plan through my wifes employer. It was a flat 250 for a non-C section hospital delivery and 8 co-pay for Rx for pain meds which would have been lower had we gotten them from a Kaiser pharmacy rather than directly from the affiliated hospital.  <response>: Definitely important. I was very worried when my daughter was born last year, as I had never had anything more than routine checkups with my doctor Kaiser Permenente as well. Thankfully, the pregnancy was covered 100 by insurance and my wife had no complications giving birth. 