Mother-of-one slapped with $9,000 in bills for her miscarriage surgery

Conz Preti, 35, was heartbroken when she found out the heart of the fetus she was carrying had stopped beating just two weeks after she learned she was pregnant. 

The pregnancy hadn’t been planned, but the baby was very much wanted. 

Preti had developed a polyp on her uterus after her first pregnancy (her son is one) and before finding out she was pregnant again.

So when she lost the pregnancy, her doctor advised surgery to remove the contents of her uterus to manage the miscarriage and treat the polyp at once.

She would have had to have the surgery to remove the polyp anyway, if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, and the same procedure was a way to manage a miscarriage. 

Devastated though she was, Preti wanted to handle the whole emotional ordeal swiftly, and according to medical advice. So she scheduled her surgery, and paid $3,000 upfront – the sum total of her out-of-pocket costs, NYU told her. 

Over the past two weeks, she has accumulated a stack of six additional bills from her insurer and is looking at $9,000 of debt for a medically necessary procedure that she was told she’d already paid for. Two just came today. 

And she’s hardly alone. Her tweet about the appalling bills has drummed up over 140 replies in a matter of hours, including from scores of women sharing their similar experiences.   

Conz Preti had to have surgery after she miscarried two weeks ago. She has since received six bills related to the procedure, totaling $9,000 after paying the $3,000 she was told she owed for the surgery, which was covered by her insurance 

Miscarriages are extremely common, yet the US healthcare system winds up charging women astronomical fees for care that is not elective.   

Losing a pregnancy is not only emotionally traumatic for a woman, but puts her in danger of life-threatening bleeding and infection if tissue from the pregnancy remains in her uterus, making a D&C (dilation and curettage) non-negotiable for some. 

So after all that, women are left grieving, healing from surgery, and in debt. 

Somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage in the US. 

It’s a staggering number, but the fact that it’s common makes the loss no less devastating for the women it happens to. 

Preti reminds herself of those statistics, trying to keep things in perspective. But knowing the probabilities is a poor antidote for a loss she feels deeply. 

‘I know it’s common. I know it’s more common than we know, because many don’t know they’re pregnant and I’m very aware of the statistics,’ she says. 

‘It’s a way of your body knowing that it’s not compatible with this life, but, emotionally, it’s still hard to process.’ 

Preti found out at the end of last year that she had developed a polyp – an abnormal tissue growth – in her uterus and scheduled surgery to have it removed, but she found out she was pregnant two days prior to the procedure.  

It’s really hard to be in this position where you’er so fragile and you will do anything for either you or your baby to be okay. Then to get all these bills is just adding insult to injury

Preti knew that having the polyp could cause her to miscarry, but she wanted to keep the pregnancy if at all possible, to have a little sister or brother for her one-year-old son.  

At seven weeks, everything looked good, and she got to hear the heartbeat. But nine weeks into her pregnancy, the fetus had stopped growing. The midwives couldn’t find a heartbeat. 

‘The miscarriage itself, even though I knew it was a possibility, it was just like a load of bricks hit me.’ 

Preti’s midwives don’t perform surgery, but her OBGYN at NYU – who was in the network for Preti’s Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance she got through her employer – does. She consulted with the doctor about her options. 

There are three ways to ‘manage’ a miscarriage, as clinical guidance terms what a woman has to do when she loses a pregnancy. 

A woman can simply wait for her body to naturally rid itself of all signs of the pregnancy, but if this doesn’t happen fairly quickly, she is left vulnerable to infection and hemorrhaging. 

Medication can be prescribed that causes the uterus’s lining to break down and be shed. 

Or, a simple operation, called a D&C – or dilation and curettage – can be performed to remove the contents of the uterus. 

An important note: the medication and surgical procedure used when a woman has miscarried are the same ones used to abort a pregnancies. But these women are not having abortions. No matter when you consider life to begin, once a woman has miscarried, there is no possibility that that fetus would ever be a baby. 

Because she had a polyp, Preti’s doctor advised she have a D&C because she would have needed one to remove the polyp anyway. Preti booked the surgery for Thursday.  

Preti has opened up about her pregnancy loss and harrowing ordeal after her miscarriage in hopes that the 'immoral' conduct of insurers won't continue

Preti has opened up about her pregnancy loss and harrowing ordeal after her miscarriage in hopes that the ‘immoral’ conduct of insurers won’t continue 

‘At the hospital, all the paperwork said I was there for an abortion,’ she recalls. 

‘It’s technically the same procedure, and I understand that, but for someone who wanted those babies, it was kind of hard to look at that paperwork that said “abortion.”‘ 

Then, there was the matter of money. Immediately, a hospital staff member came to discuss how Preti and her husband, Zach, would pay for the surgery, and when, and how much. 

‘I was really weird to be going in for something that was so emotionally charged, but even before that having to be sat down to talk about paying for it,’ Preti says. 

‘Everyone else in the hospital was really, really nice, it was just sort of the bureaucratic part of it that sucked in such a delicate situation.’ 

She and Zach were told they owed $3,000 out-of-pocket, up front, right then. So they paid it, in full, right then, just before the procedure. 

‘I was assured by the staff that that was everything I would have to pay, because that was my maximum out of pocket.’ 

The procedure itself went smoothly. It was straightforward, without complications and not physically difficult. 

Preti received another two bills on Monday, perpetuating her frustration and pain

Preti received another two bills on Monday, perpetuating her frustration and pain 

‘But going into surgery being “pregnant” and then to come out of it not being was hard to process,’ she says.  

Preti went home to grieve and heal. But then the bills started rolling in. 

First, she got one for the ultrasound that had revealed the loss of her pregnancy. Because it was so early on, Empire argued it wasn’t medically necessary. 

It was as if the insurance company was picking Powerball numbers for a lottery no one wants to win and assigning them at random to how much she owed to some element or other of the surgery: $200, $2,500 and everything in between, adding up to $9,000 in bills. 

‘On top of having to mourn the fact that I lost a baby, now I have to worry about money and that adds more stress to an already stressful situation,’ Preti says. 

‘It’s really hard to be in this position where you’er so fragile and you will do anything for either you or your baby to be okay. Then to get all these bills is just adding insult to injury.   

‘People say, “what did you expect, having a kid is expensive,” and it’s like, we know, we have a son, but we weren’t paying this amount of money upfront with him.’ 

I wonder how many people out there are going through the same and not talking about it 

And these costs won’t result in a kid. Now Preti feels less certain about trying again, too. 

‘We want more kids, but being put in this situation kind of makes me want to wait, or not even try.’ 

She has spoken to one representative at Empire, but since their initial conversation that person has not returned any of Preti’s numerous calls or messages. 

Her ongoing fight with the insurance is just an ongoing reminder of her loss too, Preti says. 

‘It’s so hard to detach one thing from another,’ she explains.  

On Monday, she tweeted: ‘I owe $9,000 for my miscarriage surgery. How am I supposed to afford this? How am I supposed to live without getting it done? 

‘The healthcare system in this country is just immoral.’ 

Over 140 people replied, offering support, insurance advice, but mostly sharing their own stories of insurance nightmares after going through a miscarriage. 

‘I wonder how many people out there are going through the same and not talking about it,’ Preti says. 

‘Just from people’s replies to my tweet and that reached out to me privately…and there’s so many that are more tragic and for whom its life or death. 

‘[Someone said] “I would’ve died and now I owe $50,000.” 

‘It’s either life or debt forever.’     

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk