Ugh! It does get overwhelmingly expensive. especially with insane deductibles like most everyone has now. Definitely look at balance billing. It varies by state. My son had an ER visit and I had to get a contract admin person and a supervisor to get the hospital to stop sending me bills. I had met his deductible and they still kept trying to charge me for the remainder of "their" price not the contracted price. It took a lot of phone calls (with people who insisted I had to pay) and me being a bulldog because I worked in healthcare and knew the law here. If I had not known better I probably would have paid it.

I can only imagine if I was elderly or cognitively impaired. The darn thing would've gone to collections. It was several thousand dollars of pumped up charges...

So did you meet deductible for this year? It would be nice for you to be able to get the workup you need.

I think it is very hard for people to understand what this kind of thing is like. Pain is not something you "get" unless you have it and it doesn't go away. Root canals, childbirth, kidney stones...all those things get better and people forget what the pain was like. A 24/7 animal is beyond most everyone's comprehension.