Sovereign Valentine, 50, from Plains, Montana, started undergoing dialysis in January after going into kidney failure.

Valentine needed 14 weeks of care for his dialysis, and racked up a $540,841.90 bill.

Valentine said he had to go to Fresenius Kidney Care clinic in Missoula, an out-of-network care facility after his insurance company, Allegiance, told him there were no in-network dialysis clinics in Montana.

Allegiance disputed the claim, saying that it had told Valentine's wife, Jessica, a trained physician, that there were no in-network options in Missoula, not Montana

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A Montana man who needed life-saving dialysis treatment says he was billed $540,000 for 14 weeks of care.

Sovereign Valentine, 50, from Plains, Montana, told CBS News that he had to undergo dialysis three times a week after going into kidney failure in January.

Valentine said he went to Fresenius Kidney Care clinic in Missoula, an out-of-network care facility after his insurance company, Allegiance, told him there were no in-network dialysis clinics in Montana. Allegiance disputed the claim to CBS News and other media sources. The company told Kaiser Health News that it had told Valentine's wife, Jessica, a trained physician, that there were no in-network options in Missoula, but that they were located in other towns across Montana

Valentine needed 14 weeks of care for his dialysis, and racked up a $540,841.90 bill.

Allegiance said in a statement to CBS News: "The main issue here seems to be a misunderstanding about the availability and location of in-network dialysis centers in Montana … Allegiance later also made special arrangements for an in-network option in Missoula."

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Valentine said that Allegiance paid more than $16,000 of the bill, but he still owes an unpaid balance of $524,600.17.

The bill is more than the typical cost of a kidney transplant, and, according to NBC News, more than twice Jessica's medical school debt.

The cost breaks down to $13,867.74 per dialysis session. Medicare, meanwhile, typically, pays $235 per dialysis session.

"It was shocking," Valentine told CBS News of his bill. "It was overwhelming. It can be distressing to get bills, but it was so high that it was like, 'how could this possibly be?'

Allegiance and the Valentines' care provider, Fresenius Medical Care, are working with Valentine to settle the bill.

Brad Puffer, spokesperson of Fresenius Medical Care North America, told CBS News: "We are committed to doing the right thing so that our patients are not placed in the middle of these disputes. In the future, we pledge to better identify situations where we believe the insurer has incorrectly classified one of our facilities as being out of network. This will allow us to address the matter directly with the insurer in the first instance, without them placing the patient in the middle."