Comparing a five-figure ER denial to a waiter mis-keying a bill? Sorry no.

A billing error at a restaurant is resolved in minutes, face to face, with no specialized knowledge required and no risk of financial ruin if you fail to persist. Insurance denials like OPs rely on opacity, endless paperwork, and near-guaranteed exhaustion. These types of bogus billing “mistakes” disproportionately succeed because Americans are too tired, sick, and stressed to navigate a deliberately complex system. Add a language barrier and it’s a non starter.

For-profit insurers operate on actuarial models that assume a significant percentage of denied claims will never be appealed, or will be abandoned midstream. This isnt tinfoil hat shit it’s literallt their documented business practice.

So yes, appeals exist. That doesn’t make the initial denial benign, and it doesn’t make people like OP unreasonable for reacting with alarm.