My state (Oregon) has protection against this. Unfortunately my emergency spinal operation was 2 months prior to the bill going into effect, so I got hit by thi

My state (Oregon) has protection against this. Unfortunately my emergency spinal operation was 2 months prior to the bill going into effect, so I got hit by this. The part that pissed me off was I KNEW about the practice and specifically made a fuss about making sure everyone in that OR was IN NETWORK. I went to an in network facility, my surgeon was in network, and so was the anesthesiologist and every person that entered my hospital room I asked if the OR staff was in network (the answer was always yes). 1 month later I get a bill for a neuro-monitoring team and an assistant-surgeon that were both out of network. The assistant surgeon charged me about $500. The neuro-monitoring team sent a ~$20,000 bill with the promise that they'd lower it to a reasonable value when I called to pay. Furthermore Blue Cross sent me a letter saying it wasn't pre-approved (even though the procedure was) and they would not cover a cent of it. Imagine the feeling of doom wondering just how low could these shysters possibly go from 20k. Thankfully that turned out to be true, the final bill was $800. Which still made me furious because I made such a huge deal out of not getting into this situation. So that was $1300 total out of pocket that I was not expecting to pay. Luckily I'm a software developer with a huge savings, but I made several angry calls anyway and even sent an appeal twice to blue cross (which they denied both times). I'm so glad this crap is finally coming to an end, but the right-leaning supreme court makes me afraid some of these laws will get reversed.