Parents Outraged By $50 Death Charge for Newborn
Family Billed $50 Fee for Newborn's Death
Jan. 15, 2011 — -- Only an hour old, Olivia Clark died on Oct. 5, 2010. The newborn, whose lungs never fully developed, had little chance of survival. She was not expected to live outside of the womb.
Olivia had polycystic kidneys that made it impossible for her lungs to grow properly, her doctors said. She was born at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, which her parents picked because of her complications.
After her death, Olivia's parents received a bill that included a $50 charge. "There was a little line at the bottom of the bill that said 'King County death tax,'" said her grandfather, Larry Clark, in an interview with KING-TV. "I couldn't believe that a little girl who lived for an hour has got to pay a $50 tax."
The county, however, says that's not completely accurate. "It's a fee for death reviews," said James Apa, a spokesman for Public Health-Seattle and King County, in which the city is located. "Death tax is not accurate. It's a death review process and there's a fee associated with the death review process which pays for medical examiners, experts to review the cause and manner of death as listed by the health care provider to ensure it's correct for the families' sake, healthcare's sake and law enforcement."
"They're mixing words," Clark told ABCNews.com. "They want to call it a fee but a fee by any other name is a tax. If you don't get a service for a fee what is it?"
The $50 fee is countywide. In 2008, King County implemented the new program to ensure that cremations, which are performed after two out of three deaths in the county, were properly reviewed and investigated.
"We were learning and hearing that there were deaths where people were being cremated and then we learned the circumstances surrounding deaths should have been investigated," said Apa.
"We relied solely on health providers to refer deceased patients for further investigation, such as in a sudden or unexpected death, a homicide or complication of medical treatment," Apa wrote in a statement.
