Mom was stunned after being charged $100,000 for baby's emergency hospital ride
She nearly lost everything while begging insurers and hospitals to reduce the debt.
A California mother says she was forced into a nightmare decision no parent should have to make: accept a $90,000 air ambulance ride for her six-month-old son or wait hours for an ambulance that wasn’t coming. Jessica Farwell was in her Antioch kitchen when a rice cooker tipped over, spilling boiling water onto her six-month-old son, Brody. His skin bubbled instantly, and she rushed him to the nearest emergency room. "They gave him fentanyl through his nose because he was just screaming. They said that they didn’t have a burn unit. There wasn't going to be an ambulance for seven hours," Farwell told ABC 7 News.
Brody needed specialized care, and the only burn unit nearby was at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Sacramento, 1 hour and 20 minutes away by car. That's when the doctors suggested they go by an emergency helicopter ride. Terrified, Farwell asked if she could drive him herself. "They said, No, sorry, you can’t," she recalled the doctor telling her, "He basically told me there was nothing I could do. I had to go on the helicopter." That helicopter ride took just 15 minutes, and it cost nearly $90,000. The doctors assured Farwell that she wouldn't have to pay for the ride since they requested it, and she had insurance. To add to the shock, Brody was placed into an ambulance for a 0.3-mile ride to reach the hospital entrance from the helipad across the street, which added another $10,200 to the bill.
"You literally can walk across the street to the hospital quicker than that ambulance, and they charged me $10,200," she said. Brody’s burns were treated, and he was discharged the next day. But months later, when the bills arrived, Farwell found out that the bill topped $100,000, and despite what doctors had promised, her insurance covered less than half. "I couldn’t believe my eyes," she said, "We got hit for a $600 waiting fee; there's a fee for it being a nighttime service. There's just every single fee you can think of." Her share came to more than $57,000 for the helicopter and another $7,300 for the ambulance.
Surprise billing for emergency transportation is one of the most common crises American families face. A cross‑sectional analysis of over two million ground ambulance services found that prior studies report between 28% and 71% of emergency ground ambulance rides result in surprise billing, often because the service is out-of-network, and patients have no choice in the provider. "I called the hospital, my insurance, the ambulance company, numerous times. It's been three years, and they kept giving me the runaround," Farwell said.
Desperate, Farwell searched online for help and found ABC7’s investigative team. Within days of their inquiries, the helicopter company agreed to drop the entire $57,000 balance, and soon after, the ambulance provider also wiped away the remaining $10,000 bill. "They called and said, 'We will never bill you again,'" Farwell recalled, adding, "It just blows my mind; I've been working on this for three years, and did not chip away at it. And within a couple of days, you had people within the insurance company and the hospital actually trying to help!" In a statement reported by 6 ABC, her ambulance provider said the issue "lies with the insurance company simply deciding to pass part of the bill to the patient," while her insurer deflected with a general comment about providing "safe, appropriate, and effective care."
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