As you may or may not remember, Mrs. PFD and I had a baby several weeks ago and I’m settling up some bills right now. The total hospital charges are $9,795.25, of which we pay $526.94. Total OB/GYN costs are $4,170, of which we pay $334.90. This was for an uncomplicated birth with only two nights in the hospital.

Some points about all this:

1. I don’t know whether the $14K of charged expenses are reasonable.
2. I don’t know whether the $862 we’re paying out-of-pocket is a good deal or not. It seems like a good deal to me, but then I suspect the hospital numbers might be inflated.
3. I don’t know whether or not I should be concerned about my ignorance of (1) and (2).
4. Given the constraints on my time, I’m not sure how to go about becoming less ignorant.
5. I don’t know if becoming less ignorant about (1) and (2) would be worth the time spent.

I do pretty well with credit card arcana, but health insurance is another matter. I’ve started fooling around with simplee.com, and it actually is a much nicer interface for looking at health expenses, yet the healthcare process remains financially inscrutable.