https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/parenting/air-ambulance-b...
But in this case it was the reverse, not "buy some service, hope for insurance to accept the bill" but "tell insurance that there's a problem, let them do the rest". I'd have been glad to have that procurement problem outsourced even if they only paid for a small fraction of the bill (just big enough to make them still care for price)
People are terrible at assessing risks. This may mean overassessing limited risks, and underassessing large risks.
Companies have a house advantage. They know the risks, and the marketing and persuasion methods. Splitting out and dividing complex risk-based goods and marketing these individually turns out to be highly profitable.
Healthcare decisions in the moment are not normal market transactions. There are any number of failures of consent, informedness, access to alternatives, asymmetry of consequences, fiducuary roles, perverse incentives, and numerous other issues.
There are tremendous variations in individual ability to pay or afford options. Regardless of individual need, in a society with highly unequal wealth and/or income, access varies tremendously.
If air transport is useful, viable, and effective, then it should be made available to all, contingent on assessed medical benefit and actual availablity. Where allocation decisions need to be made, they should not be made on a market basis.
And the consequence is precisely the surprise 5-figure-plus billings noted in the article I'd linked earlier.
I wouldn't advise being too envious, if I were you. It was noisy and cramped. You couldn't really stand up to stretch your legs. And you had to carefully watch how much you drank due to the lack of decent bathroom accommodations. Many of my colleagues loved it, mostly for the "we're in a private jet!" factor, and I suppose a larger plane might be more comfortable, but, at least as far as that one was concerned, I personally preferred flying commercial.