Parents everywhere know children can be expensive but Australians Rachel Evans and John Kan didn’t expect their baby daughter to come at a cost of nearly $1 million.

That’s what the BC Women’s Hospital says it’s owed after little Piper was born three months premature during a trip to Canada last August and had to spend three months in neonatal care.

The Sydney-area couple had travel insurance and were given the green light from their doctor to holiday overseas. But just as the couple was about to board their flight home, Evans, who was just 26 weeks pregnant, went into labour at the Vancouver International Airport and was rushed to hospital.

“We were very lucky to be at the airport when she came and not already in flight,” Evans told the Star from her home in Willoughby, a suburb of Sydney. “She came without warning, just suddenly started.”

Unbeknownst to Evans and Kan, their travel insurance policy didn’t cover the costs of the birth or the baby’s hospital care.

Now the couple is on the hook for nearly $1 million — the cost the hospital claims it incurred to look after Piper, who was born weighing just 862 grams — about 1 pound 9 ounces — for three months.

The bill works out to about $8,120 a day and does not include additional medical procedures or fees the family incurred while staying in Vancouver.

Evans says she and her husband were able to work out an agreement with the hospital that will see them paying $300 a month for the rest of their lives. Still, Evans says she doesn’t begrudge the hospital for the bill and says she and her husband take full responsibility for not reading the fine print of their insurance policy.

“We just feel very lucky. We’d been trying to get pregnant for a long time,” said Evans, 42. “Piper is worth whatever we paid. It’s just too bad it was such a huge amount.”

Piper now weighs 5 ½ kilograms and is doing everything a healthy baby her age should be doing.

Evans noted that the Australian ministry of health and ageing is looking at her case to see if some of the cost could be covered by the national government.

Jan Christilaw, president of BC Women’s Hospital and Health Centre, said it is uncommon for an out-of-country family to require a long stay at the hospital and not have costs covered by insurance.

“As the family has acknowledged, BC Women’s does have a responsibility to B.C. taxpayers who fund our hospital health-care system, and as such, has taken steps to recover the cost of care,” she said in a statement to the Star.

“Given that each family situation is unique, BC Women’s works with each family to find a compassionate compromise to recover the cost of care, as well as to support the family with any information they might require to claim costs from insurers. We have done so in this situation.”

The B.C. health ministry said it has “sympathy” for Kan and Evans and recognizes “the challenge a bill of this amount presents.”

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“However, similar to other publicly funded health-care systems, B.C. needs to be sure our resources are focused on eligible British Columbians, who ultimately fund the health-care services that are provided in B.C.,” said ministry spokesperson Kristy Anderson.

“We recommend that people purchase additional travel medical insurance, and as this case highlights, the public needs to be aware of the limitations of their private insurance policy to ensure that the policy meets their personal needs.”

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