Baby hospital stay/changed insurance

Just found this subreddit might as well get some advice. I gave birth one year ago, 4/21/23. Everything was good, I had a $2000 bill for it and paid it. The bill was for me only, labeled as vaginal delivery and postpartum care. This year I got a bill for my daughter for $7000 and some change for her 2 day hospital stay from when she was born. Here’s the big issue: she obviously did not have insurance the day she was born. I thought she was an extension of me at that time. She was added to the insurance within a month of her being born (qualifying life event) and has clearly been covered through all of her first year doctors visits, but our insurance plan also changed at the beginning of this year. (We didn’t change it willingly, my husband’s company swapped us laterally to an identical plan from Cigna to Aetna.)

My questions are, would she be covered retroactively from her birth, though she was added to our insurance plan a couple weeks later? And would the new insurance plan cover part or all of her stay when she was born? I gave the new plan information to the hospital billing department already and asked them to apply it, but realistically do you think it would work? It’s going to be 30 days of waiting, should I just start negotiating for a non-insured patient payment plan (that will have the bill reduced by 55%)? It’s been over a year since she was born I didn’t think I would be sprung this surprise bill. I’m already trying for second baby, I didn’t know I would still be paying for the first!

submitted by /u/strawbeecupcake
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