Why American ambulance rides are so expensive

American ambulance rides are exceptionally expensive due to a broken billing system where patients frequently receive "surprise bills" from out-of-network ambulance providers, even when they have insurance coverage. A man in San Francisco who was transferred between hospitals via ambulance faced a $12,873 bill, of which his insurance only covered about $9,967, leaving him responsible for nearly $3,000 despite having no choice in selecting the provider. This scenario is the norm rather than the exception: roughly half of the three million privately insured Americans who take emergency ambulance rides annually receive out-of-network bills, a rate unmatched anywhere else in American medicine.