Man Receives $13,000 Ambulance Bill For A Six Mile Ride To The Hospital After Being Hit By A Car

One of the most shocking aspects of health care costs in the U.S. are ambulance bills. The simple act of ferrying a person in need of medical care to a hospital or special facility can have a life-changing effect on a person or their family because of how expensive ambulatory services are, and those costs have been rising over the past few years. Data from healthcare nonprofit Fair Health shows that between 2017 and 2020, the average costs for transporting non-critical patients to the hospital rose 17.5 percent from $800 to $940. Patients needing critical ambulance transport saw a near 40 percent increase during the same period. Often those bills can come as a surprise to those who get them, and some expect their insurance to take care of the bill. Others will get completely blindsided by it, like one Northern California man who received a $13,000 bill for his six-mile ambulance ride from one hospital to another.

In July 2023, The Washington Post reports that Jagdish Whitten was out on a run when he tried to cross a busy street in San Francisco and was hit by a car. The impact was hard enough that he says he did "a little flip" before hitting the ground. Witnesses to the accident called for an ambulance, but Whitten instead had his friends come and take him to the hospital. "I knew that ambulances were expensive, and I didn't think I was going to die," he told The Post. Once he got to the hospital he was treated for his minor injuries, which included a broken toe and some bruises. However Whitten had also suffered a minor concussion in the accident. Because of this, the hospital informed Whitten he would have to be taken to the only trauma center in the city, which was at another local hospital. The hospital called for an ambulance to take him to the trauma center. Once there, it proved to be a waste of time. From The Post:

"After a short ambulance ride, Whitten said, emergency room doctors checked him out, told him he had already received appropriate treatment and released him."

A month after he was in the hospital, Whitten was hit by something else: a huge ambulance bill. Whitten was charged $12,872.99 for the six-mile ride from one hospital to the next. That price included $11,670.11 for the base ride, $737.16 for the six miles (that's almost $123 per mile), $314.45 for an EKG and another $151.27 for something referred to as "infection control."

Whitten says that because he was on his father's insurance he sent the bill to his dad who then sent it to their insurance carrier, Anthem Blue Cross. Anthem denied the claim because it turned out the ambulance ride was outside of their network. Experts told The Washington Post that ambulance services are often outside the insurance networks of patients to the tune of 80 percent, according to a 2023 study. State laws help shield consumers from some of the financial burden, but not when it comes to employer sponsored health insurance plans.

Ultimately, Whitten's father filed an appeal with Anthem. Anthem approved the appeal and paid $9,966.60, but that still left Whitten and his father with a bill for $2,906.39. Whitten says he tried to get the ambulance company to take care of the remaining balance but hit a wall with automated services when trying to call the ambulance company. Whitten eventually gave in and paid the bill himself.

Sadly this kind of thing happens all the time, and this isn't the first time we've reported on shocking ambulance bills. In October 2023, a woman's family was left with a near $82,000 bill for an air ambulance after she died on the way to the hospital. The woman's family ultimately had to sell their home to cover the cost of the bill.