What I don’t understand about the OP’s situation is why the urgent care place turned him away simply because they didn’t take his insurance. I’ve been in several of those places and they are always happy to take cash or credit cards. It wouldn’t have been cheap, but it would have been far less than what the ER charged.
What is pink eye? This is obviously an idiomatic expression but I’ve never heard of it.
I know it as conjunctivitis.
Urgent Care centers are just that. Urgent, not emergent. They are very obviously in the business of healthcare for money. Urgent Care fills a pretty critical hole in the broken US healthcare system.
The fact that you went to an Urgent Care facility and they referred you to an ER for a non-emergent medical issue frankly, sucks. ER facilities will always charge four legs and three arms for service but I have not ever run into the issue that you describe. “Your shit wasn’t emergent enough for ER service” from an insurance company. Also, if anyone ever asked for my credit card in an Emergency Room, under any circumstances, I would tell them as politely as I possibly could to go fuck themselves.
The UC center here was shitty, the ER was shittier, but the King of Shitheads here is your insurance provider. The fact that you (your wife) were admitted to the ER should be enough evidence that care was required to justify whatever care was given. You should absolutely not be on the hook for 100% payment.
Fight your medical insurance provider over this. Absent any events you didn’t include in your telling of the story, I can’t even imagine what pretense they have for dismissing your case out of hand.
Ah, thank you. I’ve never heard it called that before. I’m no stranger to conjunctivitis - I used to have to bathe my own eyes open quite frequently as a girl.
Yeah, emergency situations hit you with all kinds of bills.
For example when my FIL was in a motorcycle accident they flew him by helicopter to the ER. Well it seems his insurance didnt cover that so I think it was $5,000 for the helicopter ride.
My advice is just refuse to pay and keep talking to people. Remember to document everything. They can always work things out.
Quick update:
They’re not budging!
I am actually half considering asking a lawyer about this!
If someone is going to the doctor for pinkeye, then it’s probably bacterial conjunctivitis, which is the flu of conjunctivitis, while other kinds, due to viral infections of the eye directly, upper respiratory infections, or allergies, are just the common cold. Viral or allergic conjunctivitis you can treat with OTC drops and just wait them out, you need prescription drops for a bacterial infection.
I had one so bad once, that it was extremely painful, and I had to keep ice packs on my eyes for the first day, and use OTC drops in between applications of the antibiotic drops (doctor said that was OK) My whole side of my face was red. I was taking Benadryl and Motrin as well, and the goop coming out of my worse eye was like snot. I was working in my son’s preschool at the time, which is no doubt where I picked it up.
I’ve had viral pinkeye a few times, and chemical pinkeye from swimming pools (chlorine), plus allergies that made my eyes red and itchy, so I know what I’m talking about.
If you used to wake up with your eyes sealed shut, but bathed them open, and were fine the rest of the day, you may have had poor drainage when you were lying down, plus a mild dust allergy, or something. I had a cousin with that. As she got older, and the shape of her face changed, it stopped happening. She also started taking Benadryl at bedtime in the spring.
So this happened. I called again just now, starting from the bottom with whoever answers the phones in billing. This time it was a much more friendly and helpful person than the last two times I called that number. And in our conversation, he revealed to me that the hospital doesn’t even take our insurance. No one bothered to tell us this at the time! In fact they seemed to proceed as though they did take our insurance, using the information on it to charge a co-pay etc.
He said I need to bring this up in the next conversation I have with the person whose number he gave me.
I got off easy, but it’s pot-luck. I got bit on the ankle by a dog walking home from the supermarket. I have Medicare. It was only one puncture. I went straight to the emergency room at a nearby hospital. Triage there called the animal control officer, and he was there to interview me even before I even saw a doctor. A man in a white coat who might have been a doctor glanced at it, and handed me a Rx for a tube of topical antibiotic and sent me home.
No charge, anywhere, for anything. I don’t remember even a copay, but it was minuscule if there was one, less than $50. Which is why Americans hate anything that resembles Medicare or the menace of single-payer health care.
… they didn’t test for rabies?
The only way to test for rabies involves the brain stem of the animal that did the biting. It’s more common to observe the biting animal for 10 days if it’s an owned and known to be vaccinated pet, and vaccinate the victim. I’m surprised the vaccine wasn’t offered, unless they were able to verify the dog has been vaccinated.
I have a friend who had a mishap about 5 years ago requiring an ambulance to the ER, a procedure with anesthesia, and a short stay in a hospital room (released to go home about 6 hours later). The bill came to almost $10,000. As she was living on dwindling savings and had a crappy part time job, she worked with the billing department at the hospital. I believe the hospital wrote most of it off, they told her there were funds available for just this kind of situation. (Donations from fund-raising, I think.) This is one of the reasons why patients are charged $12 or whatever for a box of tissues in their room. She did pay something to the anesthesiologist and made monthly small payments to the ambulance service.
Oh yeah. Not saying my eye issues were anything like the severity of those being experienced by the OP. I just hadn’t heard the expression before.
Huh. Ignorance fought. I knew it was helpful to have the animal present but I thought that was more of a convenience thing.
I don’t know how the animal control officer followed up, I never heard any more, but I could give the exact location and id of the dog, so I’m sure the proper procedure was followed to verify that the dog was not rabid. About a year later, I got snarled at by the same dog at the same place, so it was pretty obviously not rabid.
Stuff like this is why we in England are determined not to go down the American copay route.
It might just have had good health insurance. 
FWIW:
I went to the ER (couldn’t breathe) - I had good insurance, so every doc in the place found some service - one guy talked a bit, started to walk away, then remembered. He grabbed his stethoscope and listen to my chest for 10 seconds. What is that about? The difference between “simple” and “moderate” "consultation - another $50-100.
The hospital bill was $2800, the docs wanted anothe $600.
I had a very high deductible, and the insurance ruled it was all toward the deductible.
I talked to the Hospital: “You’re paying? How about $600?”
Now you know why medical costs are what they are.
IN the mid 90’s (about a month after I (self-employed) got insurance) ran up a $54,000 bill in something less than 12 hours. That was the second time the pros had a toe tag waiting.
Update:
For many, many months I kept getting people telling me explicitly that in their own opinions I shouldn’t have to pay the full amount but they needed to hand me off to somebody else. I kept getting promised call-backs and letters etc that never materialized. But I made a point to call in every two weeks to keep prodding things and moving them along. Behaved civilly at every step, was firm and clear but not rude.
Today I finally got a call back saying the investigator (I forget the actual title but something like that) had recommended that the hospital reduce the charge to what I would have paid at the initial MedCheck visit. Hospital agreed to do it! From $938 to $104!
(There’s also the matter of the $250 or so we had to pay to the actual physician. Now that this charge has been reduced so drastically, I’m hoping that doctor’s office will see their way through to reimbursing me for some of what I paid them, but even if they don’t I am okay with counting that as a loss because I just got over $900 knocked off the total bill!)