Cost of octuplets’ care angers state taxpayers
Mother of 14 says she won’t rely on assistance
LOS ANGELES – A big share of the financial burden of raising Nadya Suleman’s 14 children could fall on the shoulders of California’s taxpayers, compounding the public furor in a state already billions of dollars in the red.
Even before the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother gave birth to octuplets last month, she had been caring for her six other children with the help of $490 a month in food stamps, plus Social Security disability payments for three of the youngsters. The public aid will almost certainly be increased with the new additions to her family.
Also, the hospital where the octuplets are expected to spend seven to 12 weeks has requested reimbursement from Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, for care of the premature babies, according to the Los Angeles Times. The cost has not been disclosed.
Word of the public assistance has stoked the furor over Suleman’s decision to have so many children by having embryos implanted in her womb.
“It appears that, in the case of the Suleman family, raising 14 children takes not simply a village but the combined resources of the county, state and federal governments,” Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote in Wednesday’s paper. He called Suleman’s story “grotesque.”
On the Internet, bloggers rained insults on Suleman, calling her an “idiot,” criticizing her decision to have more children when she couldn’t afford the ones she had and suggesting she be sterilized.
Suleman’s spokesman, Mike Furtney, urged understanding.
“I would just ask people to consider her situation, and she has been under a tremendous amount of pressure that no one could be prepared for,” Furtney said.
Furtney said he, Suleman and her family had received death threats and had been getting messages that were “disgusting things that would never be proper to put in any story.”
In her only media interviews, Suleman told NBC’s “Today” she doesn’t consider the public assistance she receives to be welfare and doesn’t intend to remain on it for long.
Suleman, whose six older children range in age from 2 to 7, said three of them receive disability payments. She told NBC one is autistic, another has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, and a third experienced a mild speech delay with “tiny characteristics of autism.” She refused to say how much they get in payments.
In California, a low-income family can receive Social Security payments of up to $793 a month for each disabled child.
The Suleman octuplets’ medical costs have not been disclosed, but in 2006, the average cost for a premature baby’s hospital stay in California was $164,273, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is struggling to close a $42 billion budget gap by cutting services, declined through a spokesman to comment on the taxpayer costs associated with the octuplets’ delivery and care.