I agree this is so frustrating. One thing that I’ve found in the US is that in addition to having fewer out of pocket costs, being on an HMO plan can significantly simplify billing vs a PPO plan. We switched over to an HMO plan from PPO during my wife’s pregnancy and we went from getting a new bill in the mail every week to just paying a fixed co-pay at the doctor’s office every visit. It saved us so much stress, and in our case we were able to keep the exact same doctors, facilities, etc. We also saved a bunch of money, but the simplicity ended up being the thing that I valued most.
Years after our child was born, I ended up getting a scary letter from a collections agency. Turns out I had missed some $20 bill from the time when we were on the PPO plan. So they say, at least - it seems equally plausible that it was a billing error on their side (of which we found many), and they never once mentioned it during any of our visits. But at that point I was not willing to fight over $20 and just paid it.
Years after our child was born, I ended up getting a scary letter from a collections agency. Turns out I had missed some $20 bill from the time when we were on the PPO plan. So they say, at least - it seems equally plausible that it was a billing error on their side (of which we found many), and they never once mentioned it during any of our visits. But at that point I was not willing to fight over $20 and just paid it.