LOOK: US hospital charges father $40 to cradle newborn son

An enraged father from Utah, USA, disclosed his hospital bill that showed he was being charged $40 (P1,900) to “hold” his newborn son.

According to WPIX TV, Ryan Grassley had a pleasant experience in the hospital on Sept. 4 when the nurse allowed him to cradle his son, Samuel, with his wife, Lidia, inside the C-section operating room. However, he was shocked when the hospital bill, dated Sept. 23, charged him with “Skin to Skin after C-Sect” for $39.35.

He shared a snap of his hospital bill from Utah Valley Hospital with the caption, “I had to pay $39.35 to hold my baby after he was born,” on social networking site Reddit on Monday. As of Wednesday, the photo was viewed 3.5 million times on the site.

Several Reddit users from all around the globe voiced out their insights on his problem. “As a Brit, this all seems so unbelievable. Having to go into debt for basic healthcare is a disgrace,” one user said.

“I cannot understand how you people live in a country with such a bad health care system and still claim to be a first world country,” another user lamented. Moreover, several users from New Zealand and Canada compared his bill to how much their citizens normally pay for a Cesarean childbirth.

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Grassley also furnished a humorous GoFundMe page to astonish non-Americans about the high cost of healthcare in the US.

“I posted the bill to Reddit because I thought it was funny. It has been interesting to see the shock from people around the world at the cost of medical expenses in the USA,” he wrote on his fund-raising page.

To clarify the $40 fee issued on Grassley’s hefty hospital bill, Janet Frank, a spokeswoman for Utah Valley Hospital, told the news site, “There is an additional charge associated with bringing an extra caregiver into the OR. The charge is not for holding the baby, but for the additional caregiver needed to maintain the highest levels of patient safety.”  Gianna Francesca Catolico