got the bratwurst from the back of the grill
got the bratwurst from the back of the grill
283 comments
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I am not going to defend the US Healthcare industry, but EMS is often? usually? a service of your local government in the US.
Here in Maryland, our ambulance are stored in the firehouses next to the fire engines and staffed by the firemen... Paid for by the county.
When I went to Austin for a bachelorette party, one of the girls passed out and hit her head and the ambulance that came to check her out was also free of charge paid for by the city. Now, their dismissive paternalism was also free of charge because it was Texas, but my point is: emergency services are frequently not part of the predatory American healthcare industry.
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t EMS is often? usually? a service of your local government in the US.
wow awesome. no one cares what level of beurocracy they are getting fucked by.
This is basically
Weed is legal in the united states
Yeah no. Not fucking federally. Not everywhere. Until that service is done the way the civilised world does it, you guys need to shut the fuck up
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It's not that I disagree that our system is shit, it's more that it seems puritanical to require the US to be totally standardized across all 50 states. We're 50 different states because we don't like each other, and the animosity is growing. It's enough to maintain the union with crazy red states trying to role back rights and illegally imprison people.
I don't see Europeans standardizing social programs across all the different countries within the EU. Germany was loathe to even lend money to Greece following the 2008 recession.
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it’s more that it seems puritanical to require the US to be totally standardized across all 50 states
no it isn't. We expect the same from other countries like brazil or indonesia, india, china or russia.
I don’t see Europeans standardizing social programs across all the different countries within the EU.
The EU is very much not a country.
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Lol tell that to the $1500 ambulance bill I got from when they drove me 3 miles in Baltimore to a hospital
Oh and the dude I knew in Baltimore that ran his own private ambulance service. Yea, they're not all funded through local gov and run by firefighters
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Your comment made me look up the way Maryland does it, and yes, it varies a lot by county.
Have you received care from EMS without being taken to the hospital? The case posted by OP did not involve going to the hospital, and so I used an example that did not involve going to the hospital. I had a vague impression that if you require transport to a hospital, you are more likely to be billed for it.
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I’m going to chime in with how it’s done in BC, Canada. It’s a very large ambulance service relative anyway considering it covers the entire province.
These are about decade old figures, but you get the idea.
Healthcare here is free except for little bits that aren’t. An ambulance trip to the hospital isn’t free, but it’s heavily subsidized and usually I believe able to be waived based on a sane argument of need or via benefits plans etc.
An ambulance ride to the hospital is/was $850 for a non-resident. Say a visitor from Antarctica or Washington. Flat, there’s so difference or accounting for if the ambulance gets torn apart throwing everything at you or you just slept.
This is way less if you don’t go to the hospital. I don’t remember exactly but I think between $150, $350, and the paperwork was missing your details. Somewhere in there.
For residents the trip to the hospital is heavily subsidized, but lacking any benefits or whatever it’s $80. I don’t know about the non-transport, but yeah.
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Like many services in the US, it is highly dependent on the region. In the places I’ve lived (in California and Washington state), each county generally contracted with a private ambulance company (or sometimes several, just to be confusing) to provide transport services. Even if an individual city’s fire department staffs their own ambulances, they may still attempt to bill insurance (since they’d be leaving money on the table at the expense of their taxpayers otherwise). Some of them may cover city residents free of charge but bill people from out of town. It just all really depends.
I would definitely dispute your last sentence — in many places, ambulances are absolutely part of the predatory American healthcare industry. Plenty of people will try to avoid calling an ambulance or try to find an alternate ride to the hospital, since they know an ambulance ride may end up costing them thousands of dollars.
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Yeah, I'm in Washington state right now, and my county has a mix of public and private ambulance services. I got t-boned by a SUV once, a private ambulance company picked me up, and I found out later that they didn't take my insurance and wanted $1500.
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Only $1500? Was the hospital across the street?
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Across all provider and payer types, the mean reimbursement per ambulance transport is $1,147.
So $1500 doesn't seem unusal.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report they reference has a lot of information about how much ambulance service in the US costs to provide and how much they end up getting reimbursed: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/medicare-ground-ambulance-data-collection-system-gadcs-report-year-1-and-year-2-cohort-analysis.pdf
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283 comments