In my experience, one can always continue care if one is willing to pay. Insurance companies do not deny care; they deny claims for care. In fact, numerous times they make mistakes and deny valid claims. Only the healthcare provider can choose to not provide care: either because they believe they will not get paid or they believe you don’t need it or some other such reason.

Considering this person has a high-paying job and it seems like a short-term intervention would have created a long-term positive outcome, it’s not clear to me why they didn’t simply insist on the care without insurance coverage.

My contingency plans for these situations are to pay out of pocket and figure out reimbursement later. In practice, paying out of pocket is just a promise to pay out of pocket. Often one isn’t charged until afterwards and I experienced sufficient mechanisms to delay payment until the whole thing had been sorted out.

Permanent conditions (like, say, brain death) are a different story. But in my case, the bill I was ostensibly facing was hundreds of thousands of dollars and I proceeded with it on the grounds that rapid intervention would yield results and I can figure out the payment structure later. If I were facing the worst case scenarios of a family medical bill bankruptcy or family member loss I think that usually I’d prefer the former. It’s hard to make a decision in the moment, but if the healthcare provider determines that more care is required and the insurance provider that it is not, I am more likely to follow the former though not without bound.

> One isn’t charged until afterwards

This is not a universal billing practice, often clinic visits are billed upfront before meeting with the provider.