•August 1, 2018•

By Trudy Lieberman,
Rural Health News Service

Two years ago in this space I told the story of a Mississippi woman Katherine Green who got caught in the unsavory business practices of the air ambulance industry that has trapped many more Americans since then. Green, a college history professor, chose to fight the company that transported her late husband to a Jackson hospital after he suffered a fatal fall in their home.
The ambulance company Rocky Mountain Holdings, a subsidiary of Air Methods, billed her $50,950. Her husband’s insurance company, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, which administered the State and School Employees’ Health Insurance Plan, paid $7,192 of the $58,142 the ambulance billed. She was on the hook for the balance.
Green’s retirement savings was in jeopardy. Alarmed, she took her case to Mississippi state officials and the media, which resulted in lots of publicity about her plight. In a recent phone call, Green told me, “I figured out from this, you have to contact everybody. The more inquiries you get out about your situation it eventually becomes too much trouble for them.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.