$60,000 Air Ambulance Bill for my 5 year old's transport to a children's Hospital

Hi, I’m a mom looking for advice on handling a $60,000 air ambulance bill for my 5-year-old daughter. In February 2022, she was admitted to the ER with an "Emergent Severe/life-threatening" status. The hospital couldn’t provide the surgery she needed due to her age, so the ER doctors arranged for her to be transported by air ambulance to the nearest Children's Hospital with the right surgical team, which was 300 miles away. A critical care team was on board, as she was also COVID-19 positive at the time.

Since then, we’ve been appealing this bill with our insurance company for over 2.5 years, but they continue to deny coverage for the air transport, saying it was “not medically necessary.” They did pay for the ground ambulance transport to and from the airport, but they won’t cover the air portion. By them deeming it "not medically necessary" it apparently blocks us or is a loophole to prevent us from protection under the No Surprises Act. Now, the air ambulance company has given us 30 days to start making payments, or they’ll send the bill to collections.

We still have one personal appeal left and the option of a third-party appeal with the insurance company, but the air ambulance company won’t wait for the appeal process to finish. I’m concerned that starting payments could imply accepting the debt, but I also don’t want this to damage our credit. We have had several calls. emails and even an in-person meeting trying to solve this with them, but they are determined to make us start paying or send us to collections.

Does anyone have advice on how to handle this? Since this was an emergency, I wasn’t provided with or able to select service costs. Any insights would be greatly appreciated! We are located in Oregon.