Baby Coming in 3 Days Tuesday via Required C-Section with Insurance that Won’t Cover
My wife is having a baby on Tuesday. The billing department at Orlando Health, who owns the hospital where we’re having the baby Tuesday, called us and said our insurance doesn’t provide coverage for baby delivery or labor for the mandatory c-section that the women’s care docs require since she had an emergency c-section for our last daughter. I wanted to throw up. She said if we prepay it would be $8,000 just for the delivery and we have no idea if that includes aftercare stay. We already paid $2,000 to women’s care for the doctors to do the delivery. This leaves many questions open-ended like what is the cost of the anesthesiologist, what if there are complications, etc. I’m assuming we’re on the hook. We’re going to be asking this stuff on Monday so if anyone has any recommendations of what to ask, please let me know.
I’m more than livid because we have united health golden rule. We’re healthy people but this has got to be the shittiest insurance plan out there. It’s $880 a month. The problem with this whole system is we didn’t expect the baby. I take personal responsibility for this happy accident but it does seem pretty frustrating that we became locked in December, then we found out when enrollment was closed late January that we were pregnant. I called my rep and he said there’s no recourse we can pursue to change anything. I still had no idea maternity/delivery wouldn’t be included so I didn’t fight it.
Does anyone know of any alternative options to get coverage with this little time left? The lady at healthcare.gov said that as soon as the baby is born the whole family can start a plan because it’s a special circumstance but this would only pay for everything AFTER the delivery, and if the hospital isn’t in-network, or the doctor’s treating her aren’t in network, we’re still covering the cost for everything. How the fuck do people do it on low income? I’m assuming the hospital gives people breaks based off of income but damn this seems so broken.