Tl;dr to start, I swapped jobs and was told by HR my insurance would last an extra week, it didn't. My son went for surgery during this lapse and noe I have a 24k bill for a hernia surgery that he still has.

In June I changed my jobs, since this was close to my 1 year old sons surgery, I had chrcked with HR to make sure my benefits would still be there. I was told they would last until my final paycheck (1 week after I left). Turns out they didn't as blue cross of tennesse denied the entire surgery and stuck us with a 24k bill plus another grand for anaesthesia. We called the hospital a few times about getting help, emergency Medicaid being ideal. They never got back to us until we received a letter from a collection agency. Now the anaesthesia is billed different so we managed to get paperwork for emergency Medicaid to cover that. The hospital didn't send us anything until the last week "they" had the bill, of course by the time they got the paperwork started on emergency Medicaid it was too late and we have a 24k bill in collections. We've contacted the collection agency to dispute it and contacted the 3 main credit agencies.

This issue is that less then one month after his surgery we ended up at the ER (another 1000 thanks deductible) for them to tell us he still has a hernia.

His doctor won't see him until we pay 500 dollars to start payments towards the 24k. We can't even talk to his office as its his receptionist who understandably won't admit anything went wrong and assures us the doctor did everything right.

We've started looking around for another urologist to see him so we can get the situation taken care of, but after all is said and done I still will have a 24k bill for an issue that is still present.

Do I lawyer up? Ive read that medical malpractice is hard to prove and expensive and only being sought as an option now because its tax season, otherwise I'd kiss this idea goodbye. Can we keep arguing the debt isnt valid with the credit agencies and show the medical paperwork proving he still has the hernia? I'm kinda stuck as far as what to do here.