Can’t pick primary insurance for my son?

My wife and I had our first child back in August of 2022. We added him to her insurance plan (United) immediately after as she had the better plan between the two of us and we would pay far less out of pocket. Her plan OOP max was 8k and 3k per insured. Mine was like 12k and 6k per insured.

I never contacted my insurance company about the birth of my son to get him added because we had no interest in doing so.

About a month ago, United started pulling back on all the bills that have gone through them saying that they are not the primary insurance and that Aetna (my insurance is). We were confused because he was never on my Aetna plan, or so we thought. I called Aetna today to get a statement from them that he was not on my policy only to find out that my policy specified that any child born would be automatically enrolled for the first 31 days and then dropped if no other action was taken. I had no notification of this. No writing from Aetna, no insurance cards, nothing and today was my first time hearing about this.

I told them that I wanted to coordination of benefits updated to make United the primary, as it was the better insurance and we didn’t even know he had an active Aetna policy at the time.

They told me that it was impossible because if the child is insured by two insurances, then the primary coverage is the parent who has the earliest birthday (excluding year).

So essentially, because I was born in April and my wife was born in August, we are now responsible for paying significantly more out of pocket than if United was the primary insurance.

Is this legal? Can we fight this? Is there really no choice for policy holders to pick what insurance they want to be the primary for their children?

We live in Texas, my company was based out of Texas and my wife’s company was based out of Florida if that helps.

submitted by /u/Better_Ball_6665
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