Some Kaiser members also e-mailed The Times. One asked the paper to "cover the discontent of the Kaiser octuplets," fearing that the cost of hospitalizing Suleman and the octuplets will be borne by current members.
Kaiser declined to say how much Suleman's care is costing. According to records from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, the average charge for a cesarean section with complications is $7,095 per day.
Suleman's care, though, goes far beyond even the scale for complicated deliveries, with 46 doctors, nurses and assistants in the delivery room. The average daily charge for one baby with "significant problems" is $3,063. And the average charge per day for one postpartum stay without an operating procedure is $3,029.
Using this data as a conservative estimate, the 12-day-old octuplets have already racked up nearly $300,000 in charges. Suleman was hospitalized for more than 9 weeks.
Suleman said she tried unsuccessfully for seven years to get pregnant through artificial insemination and medication. Each of her 14 children has been conceived through in vitro fertilization and using the same sperm donor and fertility specialist, she told NBC. Six embryos were transferred, resulting in two sets of twins, she said.
"I wanted them all transferred," Suleman said. "Those are my children, and that's what was available and I used them. So, I took a risk. It's a gamble. It always is. . . . And it turned out perfectly."
Suleman has yet to name the doctor or clinic. The California Medical Board has said that it is investigating whether there was a violation of the standard of care. Most fertility doctors follow guidelines that recommend implanting no more than one or two embryos in women younger than 35.
Michael Furtney, one of Suleman's publicists, said he had been taken aback at some of the public reactions to the event -- which included death threats against the mother and people boycotting firms that he had done business with because of anger about the case.
"It is sad," Furtney said. "When you move from an ordinary person to celebrity life, there are no bars or limits. . . . It is the death of privacy."
He asked for people to be more tolerant until Suleman has told her story but said that at a time when the economy is tanking and people are uncertain of their futures, "she makes a handy target."
