How important is a home birth really?

When it come right down to it, all that really matters... is money.

"NO no no", you are saying. "That is not what cliches have taught me" You may think for instance "love is all you need" or "money cant buy happiness" or "when in Rome do as the Romans do" (well okay that last one doesn't fit)

I am here to tell you that, in my country(which is also very likely yours also), you cant do anything or have anything without money.

you may be happy-ish or you may have love (i know i do) but without money(and a good deal of it) you are stuck doing what every body else wants you to do, when they want you to do it

I guess you aren't exactly stuck, you can do what ever you want, if you don't mind doing some time in the clink(haha lingo like i have been there)

Though home births are touted as being cheaper than hospital births....for the average lower income American family, i don't believe that to be true.

We have insurance... we are forced to have insurance, and we being of little means have the cheapest insurance that my husbands job offered. This means that if we use a preferred provider than insurance with cover their share, but seeing a provider that takes blue cross blue shield but is not a preferred provider (meaning basically that they do not bill patients the way that BCBS wants) then our insurance will pay exactly 0% of the bills.

Maternity coverage for a BCBS preferred provider  will 100% care and tests, and $150 limit on the hospital stay

Maternity coverage with an out of network midwife, $3500... that is her total, everything included (test will be covered by insurance)

Though the actual bill from the hospital will total about 9000 dollars i will pay only $150, considerable cheaper than $3500

Now the real question is how badly do i NEED an out of hospital birth? My immediate answer is, "money is no object and a hospital isn't an option unless for an absolute emergency"

But the real answer is "we cant afford, a better birth"

We tried to cancel insurance... with the 300 dollars a month we pay towards insurance that we haven't used in 10 months (because we cant afford to go to the doctors whilst paying so much for insurance) we could be paying towards a midwife (that would leave about 150 dollars to pay out of our pocket to make it to 3500 by the birth of 4bangerbaby)
 but we couldn't change our insurance policy until "open season" the two weeks when husbands work has deemed it acceptable to make our own decisions about life. So we are stuck until November with an insurance plan that we don't want.


There is another option:

A birthing center, an hour away. Insurance covers them, but although we are within their 50 mile radius, they wont drive to us for a home birth... their reason, traffic!!!!!!! Thank you dc traffic for ruining our life!!! and my ideal home birth experience

i could drive there and have my baby, but the dilemma is, 3stroke baby(know as B3) came precisely one hour after i went into labor

it is my (and husbands) thinking that we will have a baby in the car on the way to Alexandria.

So how important is a home birth to you?