Are you sure? I couldn’t say with certainty whether any emergency service is covered by my insurance. There are no blanket statements and a relatively high co-insurance to ER services. Most policies have over $10,000 in co-insurance so stating that 90% are technically covered doesn’t actually respond to the parent’s claim. You’d have to know intimate details for how the service is billed which is apparently impossible before receiving service. If you don’t believe me call your hospital or your physician or your insurance company and ask what your out-of-pocket would be. Nobody can tell you.

The article explicitly says that (a) he has insurance (b) this is out of pocket after insurance and (c) the insurance is disputing whether to cover this at all:

> Hospital officials at Jackson told the Miami Herald that, based on his insurance, Azcue would only be responsible for $1,400 of that bill, but Azcue said he heard from his insurer that he would also have to provide additional documentation: three years of medical records to prove that the flu he got didn’t relate to a preexisting condition.

Also for the irony:

> Azcue said he earns about $55,000 a year working for a medical device company that does not offer health insurance

What percentage of that insurance doesn't involve arcane rules about what's covered? My parents recently learned, following my dad's heart attack, that our town's ambulance was considered "out of network" and told they should have shopped around first. I had the pleasure of overhearing this conversation. Combined with the fact that many rural and suburban folk can't afford a $20 copay for a regular checkup let alone thousands of dollars for their deductibles, I put little confidence in that 90% coverage.