Why is it so expensive to give birth in America?

As a first-time mother, Charlene Covarrubias understood she had plenty to worry about over the course of her pregnancy: the brain fog, the emotional roller coaster from her body producing 100 to 1,000 times her usual concentration of hormones, the constant nausea that — contrary to its epithet — strikes not just in the morning, but any time of day. She had anticipated the mental and physical exhaustion of carrying a baby to term. What she didn’t realize was that the actual birth would cost her thousands of dollars.

Covarrubias is 32 and lives with her husband in Salt Lake City, Utah. She’d started saving to have her first child through her employer’s insurance and Health Savings Account long before she hit 26 weeks of pregnancy in October. She knew that having a baby would be expensive, t