>$40k medical bills, feeling hopeless

I want to start by saying: I understand that I made a tremendous mistake by not fully verifying insurance providers. I know I should have discussed this and looked for advice earlier. I’ve just been living under a black cloud due to this situation and just now am feeling encouragement to share this publicly.

My wife and I had our first child in May of 2022. We love our daughter so much and would trade her for the world. Throughout the pregnancy, our OBGYN was an in network provider and we were able to have insurance cover the vast majority of our medical costs.

However, unbeknownst to us, the hospital in which we gave birth (under the advice of our OB office) was not within our network. When our insurance was “verified” on the day of the birth, we were not made aware that we were out of network. Due to some complications post birth, our daughter had to stay in the NICU for a few days. This was of course an “out of network” cost for us and insurance only covered a small amount, hence how we now owe ~$40,000.

Fast forward a few months and we have not heard a word from the hospital. Not a phone call, email, letter, nothing at all. We find it odd that we hadn’t heard anything regarding the bill and was not given any information about it for months.

We then get a call from a Collections agency saying that we owe this large sum of money. I’m stunned. I called our insurance who said that unfortunately the billing was performed correctly. The hospital never verified our address and allegedly had the wrong one on file. Hence why we never received our bill and was never allowed to opt into a payment plan. When asked if they could remove the claim from collections they said that it was “out of their control”. I called the insurance company again to see if we could refute the claim. Since we were never given a bill by the hospital due to them having our wrong address, the 6 month period in which we could refute the claim had passed.

Since I’m fearful of being sued and/or going to court, I started a payment plan to the collections agency a few months ago. I am afraid to stop paying the agency and need advice as to what to do. If it were a few hundred bucks I wouldn’t mind, but paying the $40k in full just crushes my daughter’s (and our) financial future. Is there anything I can do?