•March 16, 2016•

By Trudy Lieberman
Rural Health News Service

Not many of us think about needing air ambulances. We don’t dwell on that possibility, but for people hurt in car accidents or who live in smaller or rural communities without medical care at hand, being airlifted to a hospital can mean the difference between life and death.

Increasingly, the service also can mean the difference between getting well at a price you can afford or at a price that could push you over a financial cliff. Air ambulances have become the centerpiece of a nationwide dispute over balance billing, a practice that requires unsuspecting families, even those with good insurance, to pay a large part of the bill.

In Nebraska a woman who was injured when her van rolled on a gravel road found herself with a $44,000 air ambulance bill. Her insurance paid most of the bill. A North Dakota man who got a $67,300 bill from a company that transported his wife to the Mayo Clinic had to pay more than $50,000 out of pocket. In Ohio, a man filed for bankruptcy because he owed $22,000 to an air ambulance company, which had placed a lien on his home.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.