A $550,000 Birth: Florida Mom Gets Jaw-Dropping Hospital Bill After Having Baby

ORLANDO, FL — When he was born too early, Dorian Bennett stayed in an Orlando neonatal intensive care unit for nearly two months. His mother, Bisi Bennett, didn't worry what his care might cost her, she told Kaiser Health News. She had insurance, and she was careful to pick an in-network hospital.

But then the bill came.

AdventHealth Orlando billed Bennett $660,553 for Dorian's NICU care. The "patient responsibility" portion of the bill was $550,124. The hospital did offer the Bennetts assistance — a 12-month payment plan at nearly $46,000 per month.

"I was very upset when I saw the half-a-million-dollar bill because I felt like I done everything in my power to avoid them sending me that huge bill," Bennett told CBS News.

Why was Bennett charged so much? It came down to an insurance snafu and a lack of communication, according to reports.

In 2020, Dorian was covered under a UnitedHealthcare plan, Kaiser Health News reported. In 2021, Bennett's employer switched from UnitedHealthcare to UMR. Bennett informed AdventHealth of the change.

Rather than billing United Healthcare for 2020 and UMR for 2021, the hospital billed both policies for both years, CBS News reported. When neither would cover the bill because of the administrative error, Bennett was charged more than $550,000.

"I called the hospital several times just to let them know, 'Hey, you guys are lumping the bill together, you need to split it out,'" Bennett told CBS News.

The Bennetts spent more than a year fighting the bill, which some experts say is "indicative of all the ways the system fails the patient."

"A bill this large is a huge crisis for the family, but it's not a huge crisis for the insurance company or the hospital," Erin Fuse Brown, an associate professor of law at Georgia State University who studies health care policy, told Kaiser.

AdventHealth Orlando Hospital revised the bill after being contacted by Kaiser Health News in October. Bennett's bill was revised to $300 total.