Costs
The HMBANA Guidelines stipulate that donors not be paid for their milk. However, collection, processing and distribution of milk are expensive, and recipients are charged $3.00-$4.50 per ounce of milk to cover some of the cost. Community fundraising and grants also help milk banks meet expenses. The guidelines ensure that no one is denied donor milk for lack of ability to pay. For non-hospitalized recipients, the milk bank will often work with the family to obtain coverage for processing fees (Arnold, 1997). However, insurance companies rarely cover donor milk, except under unusual circumstances (Griffith, 2002). In some states, and under some circumstances, Medicaid and WIC will cover the costs of using banked milk (Arnold, 1999, Wight, 2001).
When hospitals order banked milk for their NICUs it is often brought into the pharmacy and billed through the hospital. In these cases, insurance companies are much more likely to cover the processing fees than for outpatients (Arnold, 1997).
Read more about this topic: Human Milk Banking In North America
Famous quotes containing the word costs:
“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.—Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It costs you something to do good!”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)