My ride cost me around $1,000 USD, which sounds like a bargain compared to numbers I’ve heard from others. But, it was still a big financial burden considering I’d just been laid off from work.
There’s only one ambulance service operating in my rural area, and my health insurance considers them “out-of-network”. Not that it would have mattered, when you call 911 (emergency services), you don’t get to haggle and negotiate with the operator and your insurance provider to send an in-network unit, you get what you get.
Probably a good thing I refused treatment, other than bandaging to stop the blood loss, during the ambulance ride. The 2 ibuprofen I was given in the emergency room cost $40 since they were considered non-necessary and I did not get prior approval. I can only imagine what the ambulance up-charge would have been if I’d accepted anything from them aside from letting them wrap me up so I didn’t bleed to death on the way to the hospital.
Its the ABC’s of the american economy: Always Be C-porting market solutions that fuck us over
*“Welcome to capitalism; that’ll be $350. Suck my dick”
Fixed that last comment.
“But our taxes are so low and our incomes are so high!”
boom 30+ years in debt because student loan
boom Diabetes
boom Insane living costs
boom Hospital bill
boom Homeless
How do Americans sleep at night knowing they could be royally fucked the moment they have just a little bit of bad luck?
My friend and her daughter were in a car accident a couple of months ago, both went to the hospital in the same ambulance. Both are on the same health insurance. Each one of them got a bill for the full amount of the ambulance ride.
gits hit by car
me: nah I ain’t goin to hospital hospital is for weak
We have free health care in Canada but if you call an ambulance and it was determined not to be an emergency you pay a fine.
How strict is that determination? Do you only get fined if it’s an extreme mismatch (like calling an ambulance for a small scratch that doesn’t even necessitate a doctor), or also if you actually have serious issues but not quite serious enough to die on the same day?
Thank God that where I live, the ambulance rides are free. The hospital care is still expensive, though.
For childbirth though we’re definitely driving to hospital here in Europe unless something went very very bad. Plenty of time between the start of the party and the conclusion of it. It would be poor taste to use ambulance for something actually not urgent.
What about for those who don’t have a car?
For something rare like a pregnancy, I’d call a taxi if I don’t have anyone else who can+wants to drive us.
Back when I didn’t need - didn’t had one I called family to drive us. And then for a few days I took the bus as usual. But that was some 20yrs ago ;-) Now I would take an Uber-like service.
Gotta love how this is a convo as old as time, repeating for decades… only now shown as a disjointed mix of shitty memes…
What once was a cogent argument now reduced to a picture of Julia Luis Dreyfus (herself a billionaire shipping heiress) looking confused about capitalism…
To be fair, billionaires arent knowm for being smart or understanding things.
Europe also has capitalism they just have the basic decency to understand that relatively free healthcare is good for capitalism.
Most Europeans will say they have social democracy I think.
They’re not mutually exclusive. Capitalism is the economic system.
Capitalism with social safeties and regulations is the economic system, social democracy is the political ideology enforcing the economic system
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Another thing that’s common in America is that after you drive yourself to the emergency room, you sit in the parking lot for a while to see if you can get through the emergency situation on your own before going in, because you know you’re going to sit for hours and hours waiting anyway.
Why risk being charged tens of thousands of dollars and losing your housing when you can wait in your car to see if you’re gonna die. And if it’s that bad, you can crawl toward the emergency room. And then maybe they’ll come help you. Otherwise, you can just sit it out like you would be sitting in the waiting room and then just leave if you get through it yourself.
If I think I’m getting through it with no issue I’m not going to the hospital at all. The only time my family has driven to the emergency room without thinking we absolutely needed to go was for a sexual assault swab (that we knew would never get analyzed, but she wanted it done and I knew it was the best path towards her getting trauma treatment). Everything else was something like difficulty breathing during covid or during a smoke storm, possible anaphylaxsis, or a major concussion. Fortunately we get insurance where one go hits your annual deductible, so the rest are cheap.
Unless you’re at a hospital where you have to pay for parking. I’m not paying just to sit in my car in the parking garage.
I’d also mention timing being an issue with ambulances.
My first kid we were about 40 minutes away from the hospital where it was covered by insurance, the second we moved and changed providers so we were 10 minutes away. I drove both times.
First kid it would have taken 20 minutes for an ambulance to get to us, then maybe 30-35 minutes to the hospital.
Second, it would have been about 5-10 minutes, but… Obviously I could be there in the same time as it would take to get there.
For both, I would have to hit the deductible first, so I would have paid about $1500 for each ride on top of that, because ambulance services aren’t (maybe weren’t? Probably still aren’t) considered required care with a pregnancy/birth. Thats not the cost if you dont have insurance BTW, that’d a negotiated price by the insurance companies - it could be several thousand otherwise.
I’m in my 40’s, I’ve been to an emergency room quite a few times over the years, and I’ve never taken an ambulance there. Everything from a car accident (drove myself to the hospital), to severe 2nd degree burns (drove myself to the hospital), to a sudden infection/massive swelling overnight (wife drove me).
So… Yeah… Its bullshit. American “healthcare” is a joke.
US healthcare is extortion.
So recently, 5 months ago, I had to ride in the ambulance and it was around $2500. It cost me $75. I have low income insurance so I’m lucky, but most don’t.
As someone who is currently very low income, even $75 dollars could cause me a heckton of stress. I’m sorry that healthcare sucks so hard for y’all
