I was on the point of subscribing to an air ambulance insurance policy, until I realized what a rip-off it was. Why? SEVERAL air ambulance companies serve our local hospital. Therefore, it was impossible to know whether that company would be the one called upon to transport me in an emergency.

I DID know air ambulances cost an arm and a leg (one patient cited in this NYTImes article was billed over $50K for such a fee to change hospitals).

And once, a (then) very young son who got a facial dog bite caused me to be billed many thousands of $$ because the ER called in a maxillo-facial doc for cosmetic reasons. Checking this allegedly "usual and customary" fee against EVERY other maxillo-facial practice in our whole county, I found that as suspected, it was WAY more than all the others.

(You probably know, there are sleazy services whose job is to somehow help doctors get such "surprise" bills to be successfully put through according to medical coding and zip code research.)

Elsewhere, I have done pre-op research so I didn't risk out of network anesthesiologists being called in while I was unconscious.

Another of those "legal" loopholes one can risk being bankrupted by (like Civil Forfeiture).

Anyhow, it looks like a by-partisan effort (Yes!!) is on the point of ridding the general public of the scourge of "surprise billing". Hip hip hooray! There just isn't any way to protect oneself of this financial risk hanging over most of us.

Finally ending "Surprise Billing"!