ROSEVILLE, Calif. ― A woman and her newborn baby were sent two separate bills for ambulance transport , over $3,500, after she gave birth in the hospital parking lot.
Katie Moraida’s water broke a week early, and as her husband rushed her to the hospital, she ended up giving birth in the car in the Sutter Roseville hospital parking lot, reported CBS Local.
“And I said I have to push, I pushed and came out,” said Moraida.
Roseville Police witnessed the incident and called the paramedics, who cut the umbilical cord and drove Moraida and the baby a few hundred yards from the parking lot to the hospital door.
Upon receiving the bill, Daniel Moraida said, “For not even a full ambulance ride … We had already done the hard part, delivered our child in the front seat of our car.”
The couple said that while her insurance covered Katie’s portion of the bill, it would not cover their baby’s bill due to how AMR coded it.
Consumer advocate Amy Bach with the United Policyholders said coding in a common issue with insurance and is pushing for a federal law that would give families six months to clear up dilemmas like these before being sent to collections.
Ten months after their son Sawyer was born, the Moraida’s insurance agreed to cover most of the baby’s ambulance bill.
Had he known what he knows now, Moraida said, “I would’ve walked into the hospital, grabbed a wheelchair and put them both in the wheelchair and pushed them up myself.”