--- title: The Beyond-Stupid Reason One Nurse Got Hit With a Nearly $1 Million Bill After Giving Birth description: A nurse gave birth to a preemie in California. Then the hospital where she works asked her to pay a bill of almost $1 million. authors: - name: Kristen Bahler role: Managing Editor url: https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/ bio: Kristen Bahler has spent more than a decade turning culture, work and consumer spending trends into conversation-driving stories. Today, she leads Money's sponsored content channel and reader-favorite franchises like Best Places to Live and Best Places to Travel. education: Northeastern University, MA Journalism at_money_since: 2016 articles: 52 covers: - Insurance - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-bahler/ published: '2019-11-04T18:32:41.000Z' modified: '2019-11-04T18:55:40.000Z' section: Insurance tags: - Health Care - health insurance word_count: 322 canonical: https://money.com/cost-of-giving-birth-preemie-health-insurance/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Premature newborn leg](https://img.money.com/2019/11/nurse-giving-birth-bill-one-million-1130569530.jpg) Lauren Bard, an ER nurse from California, gave birth to her daughter three months early last September. It was a traumatic delivery — doctors said her daughter, Sadie, had only a 50% chance of surviving. But after weeks of nail biting in the emergency room and neonatal intensive care unit, both mom and baby pulled through.. Then came the bill. On October 7, about a year after Sadie's birth, Bard posted a photo to Facebook of a statement from the University of California, Irvine Medical Center. Bard owed $898,000, it said. Dignity Health, the company that owns the hospital Bard works for, requires employees to enroll newborns within 31 days of their birth to get coverage, according to [*ProPublica,*](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-one-employer-stuck-a-new-mom-with-a-bill-for-her-premature-baby?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations) which first reported this story. And while Bard says she called her plan administer three days after Sadie’s birth, she didn't call Dignity directly. So the nearly $1 million bill was now her responsibility. Egregious labor and delivery charges have been making lots of headlines lately—from a viral Reddit post of one dad’s [$40 fee](https://imgur.com/e0sVSrc) for “skin to skin contact” (holding his own baby) to a [$1,000 bill](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59jg78/giving-birth-hidden-hospital-costs) charged to a new mom for a 15 second “consultation” with an anesthesiologist—and they paint a shocking portrait of the state of maternity care in the U.S.. The average fee for a 24-hour hospital stay and a non-Caesarean delivery hovers around $11,000, and that number jumps to about $30,000 with before and after-care, according to data cited in [the *Economist*.](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/23/a-typical-american-birth-costs-as-much-as-delivering-a-royal-baby) Even with insurance, parents are left with an average bill of about $3,000. In the end, Dignity reversed its decision to block Bard's daughter from her insurance plan. Cases like these are rare, but not extraordinary — at the hospital where Bard gave birth, 1% to 2% of mother face similar situations, according to *ProPublica.* Had the company not reversed course settling the debt "would take so long I'd be dead," Bard tells the publication. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/cost-of-giving-birth-preemie-health-insurance/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Insurance", "item": "https://money.com/insurance/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Health Insurance", "item": "https://money.com/health-insurance/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "The Beyond-Stupid Reason One Nurse Got Hit With a Nearly $1 Million Bill After Giving Birth" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/cost-of-giving-birth-preemie-health-insurance/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/cost-of-giving-birth-preemie-health-insurance/", "name": "The Beyond-Stupid Reason One Nurse Got Hit With a Nearly $1 Million Bill After Giving Birth", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2019-11-04T18:32:41.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/cost-of-giving-birth-preemie-health-insurance/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/cost-of-giving-birth-preemie-health-insurance/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2019-11-04T18:55:40.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Beyond-Stupid Reason One Nurse Got Hit With a Nearly $1 Million Bill After Giving Birth", "articleSection": "Insurance", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2019/11/nurse-giving-birth-bill-one-million-1130569530.jpg", "width": 5264, "height": 3508, "caption": "Premature newborn leg" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kristen Bahler", "url": "https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/kristen-bahler/#author", "description": "Kristen Bahler has spent more than a decade turning culture, work and consumer spending trends into conversation-driving stories. 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