How many tons of dirt do you need to move to give intensive care to an infant? I spent quite a bit of time in the NICU and was never able to locate the $10,000/day expense. Medical expenses have more to do with billing codes and reimbursement rates than anything fundamental.
This information comes from consulting my mother (who is an obstetrician):
The most "direct" cost of NICU care is 24-hour supervision by a nurse. In the best (cheapest) case, this will cost the same as 12 hours of minimum wage per day, as nurses might be in a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio with patients. More realistically, the nurse will be making higher than minimum wage.
The NICU fee also covers the amortized cost of three major pieces of capital: the ventilator, which causes the baby to breathe, the incubator, which keeps it at an appropriate temperature, and the negative pressure room. A particular infant may or may not need the negative pressure room, but it exists as a (physically separate) part of the NICU, the hospital must have one, and it's hugely expensive to create.
Additionally, the baby is expected to suffer various bodily failures which will require treatment. Diagnosis and treatment of these will be charged separately; they are not covered in the NICU fee. But they do reflect that these babies would really rather die, and it's difficult and expensive to get them to live.
My mother says (paraphrased), "if you are the army, you buy all the machines yourself, you pay everyone army salaries, and you just assign them 'you'll do this job, you'll do this job', etc., I don't know what it would cost to run an NICU. There's definitely room for it to be cheaper."
