There’s no Insurance Commissioner( or similar) in your state? That’s sounds absolutely like an emergency.
I even asked the doctor to write a letter, expressly stating that it was an emergency and I was not in any state of mind to be looking up in-network hospitals. It didn’t help.
I didn’t think about the Commissioner though. Hmm.
What was the reason given for the refusal?
Was a in-network hospital close enough to be an option in the eyes of the insurance company?
IIRC it just said “out of network”. Probably they thought I should have gone to the correct one. There are about a half-dozen of them nested up in the same few blocks downtown.
Unfortunately, if the hospitals were that close, they probably have standing to refuse. If you had been unconscious, it would have most likely been different.