Current Events > $2,275 for an ambulance ride in America

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/6/0/AAPw6aAADndc.jpg

This is America.

Dammit Neon

Messed up.

Something like 41 million Americans are in MEDICAL debt.

This is why I prefer if they just leave me to die

$500 in Alberta
$0 in Ontario

Just get Uber or Lyft

Aztex posted...

Just get Uber or Lyft

At that time I'd have had to drag my mother out of the hotel. Didn't wanna look like I was dragging a body

Aztex posted...

Just get Uber or Lyft

please dont do this

When I still drove for Uber, I had a pregnant woman who was in labor who tried to call me to go to the hospital in an UBER POOL and I refused to take her

1. I dont want to be responsible if something happens to the baby
2. I dont want to be responsible if she gets sick or dies on my watch
3. The back seat will be an absolute mess if she throws up or anything if that nature

Unless you're dying, dont take an ambulance >_> I've gotten called for dumb shit like hiccups and toothaches and all they're doing is getting billed for me staring at them for 10 minutes, cuz wtf am I gonna do for that shit

NeonOctopus posted...

Unless you're dying, dont take an ambulance >_> I've gotten called for dumb shit like hiccups and toothaches and all they're doing is getting billed for me staring at them for 10 minutes, cuz wtf am I gonna do for that shit

Does impending Diabetic coma count as dying?

wackyteen posted...

Does impending Diabetic coma count as dying?

eat some pb and j quick and call an uber if you can? >_> otherwise I guess I'll just shoot you up with D-50

ColdRainAndSnow posted...

Messed up.

Something like 41 million Americans are in MEDICAL debt.

Biden should target medical debt relief next

AzNDarkSamurai posted...

please dont do this

They don't want to be responsible for a $2k ambulance drive either, so what is your suggestion?

And remember, certain folks of a particular political persuasion defend this shit and want it to get worse.

I'm not a doctor and this isnt medical advice.

Call an uber unless you're dying lol.

My 6 day stay in the hospital, ekg, bone marrow biopsy, spinal fluid test, port installation, intrathecal dose of chemo, port install, and five days of chemotherapy was lowered down to 85k by the insurance. It's fucking insanity. Luckily my max out of pocket was 3200 so that's all I paid, but even that is a ton of money for the vast majority of Americans. If I hadn't had insurance I would have just let the cancer kill me to be very honest.

And the paramedics probably get paid starvation wages too.

One of my old classmates was in a car accident at the corner of the hospital block a few hundred feet from the ambulance entrance. She was charged $2,500.

Mearcstapa posted...

And the paramedics probably get paid starvation wages too.

ehhh, depends on where you work. There's some places that will pay you garbage. But there's government jobs that pay you BANK (like $80k-$110k). But they're highly competitive and you have to deal with a lot of bullshit calls >_>

NeonOctopus posted...

eat some pb and j quick and call an uber if you can? >_> otherwise I guess I'll just shoot you up with D-50

When they took her sugar then, it was so high it wouldn't read. So it was over 1000.

A pb and j would've probably killed her.

Not that she was lucid enough to eat

That's more or less most America's monthly salary.

I'm tripping, you meant hyperglycemia

Yeah, take an ambulance just in case >_>

Seriously out here charging $150 for putting an IV in and hanging a bag of fluid?
$180 for putting on a CO2 monitor and a pulse oximeter? This is insanity.

I can tolerate the top line charges for the callout and acuity, but some of these "extras" are pretty disgusting. It's hard to imagine a high acuity callout doesn't just automatically require basically all of these other things. If you're still going to charge piecemeal for them, don't charge more for a higher acuity call.

Fuck that, I'd call a friend/relative/neighbor.

fucked up. let me die.

Robot2600 posted...

fucked up. let me die.

You can't afford a funeral either tbh

It is a moral obligation to not pay medical debt.

Piss country.

Pull up ya boot straps and either WALK to the Hospital or ORDER AN UBER like a REAL AMERICAN!

I'll drive there, get an Uber or Lyft or just crawl there before I spent that much.

WilliamPorygon posted...

You can't afford a funeral either tbh

I'm not the one who has to worry about what my funeral costs

Aztex posted...

Just get Uber or Lyft

this unironically

WilliamPorygon posted...

You can't afford a funeral either tbh

Good luck charging my hell bank account

I always thought if you got in a fight with someone and knocked them out, you could call them an ambulance and it would be like punching them again later

Why does it cost $87 and some change to clamp an oxygen sensor to your finger?
You can buy the entire thing for $15 at walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/674816639

NeonOctopus posted...

I'm not a doctor and this isnt medical advice.

Call an uber unless you're dying lol.

People would always call the ambulance if I had a seizure in public :<

I mean luckily I have insurance so the bills were minuscule, but it was annoying waking up in a hospital in a daze, not knowing where I was. Once, someone even cut the straps off my backpack :(

DipDipDiver posted...

I always thought if you got in a fight with someone and knocked them out, you could call them an ambulance and it would be like punching them again later

Lol that's messed up.

DipDipDiver posted...

I always thought if you got in a fight with someone and knocked them out, you could call them an ambulance and it would be like punching them again later

beat a man up, you ruin his day

call him an ambulance, you ruin his life

FL81 posted...

beat a man up, you ruin his day

call him an ambulance, you ruin his life

Dark, but funny.

Philip027 posted...

They don't want to be responsible for a $2k ambulance drive either, so what is your suggestion?

Don't pay the ambulance bill

Irony posted...

This is why I prefer if they just leave me to die

Me as well. I will 100% refuse their service if someone else calls them for me

ScazarMeltex posted...

I would have just let the cancer kill me to be very honest.

damn. don't want that. i had an ambulance bill for 1.5k dollars because my body couldn't handle overheated house and ended up having a seizure because i didn't drink enough fluids.

fucked up back for a month (hurt so bad). worse than sprained ankle but nothing close to kidney stone.

this was a few years ago. i try to keep a spare canister of powdered drink mix in case i get thirsty (water alone is better they say).

You should at least call them and see what they actually used on that list of itemized stuff and what they just tacked on. There's a common problem with ambulances WAY overcharging, mostly for things that they DIDN'T even use. (45 bucks for Tylenol that was never given, a few hundred for things like ekgs and blood tests that never happened and/or were listed multiple times, other things that didn't even make sense.

Like my dad's insurance lapsed for one day or something like around a year or two a year or two ago, and I remember when he got an ambulance bill he was pissed because they not only charged him for stuff they didn't even do, but put it one their multiple times in different ways just to charge more. He even called them, and they actually waived the bill because they had assumed he had insurance and told him that that is what they charge insurance, and if he didn't have insurance, they'd immediately waive the whole ambulance fee. They even said that they literally only charge that way to make insurance pay more because they have to haggle with insurance companies afterwards.

So you should definitely call them. Also, before you do, learn what everything on that list is and try to remember how much it it even actually happened.

ill never understand our medical system
when my wife was pregnant with our youngest, she had a major life threatening complication and spent six months in the hospital on bed rest under constant monitoring

she wasnt working because of that and our income dropped low enough to qualify for state insurance, which paid for everything. had we made 10k more that year and been ineligible, we'd have been facing millions of dollars in hospital bills.

WilliamPorygon posted...

You can't afford a funeral either tbh

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jul-21-me-unclaimed21-story.html

The trick is to not claim the body. That leaves the municipality on the hook for disposing it. Cremation is climbing in price because more people are turning to abandoning their bodies as a budget solution. It's been that way since the recession of 2009. It's gotten so bad that the coroners are contracting private funeral homes to handle cremating the overflow.

Oubliettes posted...

ill never understand our medical system
when my wife was pregnant with our youngest, she had a major life threatening complication and spent six months in the hospital on bed rest under constant monitoring

she wasnt working because of that and our income dropped low enough to qualify for state insurance, which paid for everything. had we made 10k more that year and been ineligible, we'd have been facing millions of dollars in hospital bills.

It's easy to understand.
It's Profit, just Profit.

BB_mofo posted...

The trick is to not claim the body. That leaves the municipality on the hook for disposing it.

my brother was trying to protect me from having to pay for funeral costs after mother died. barely make enough to survive on my income to afford something like that.

i cant complain much. others have it much worse.

Even excluding the better route of UHC, it is astounding that there has been zero attempt to curb and reduce all this shit due to how much money must be funneled into the pockets of politicians. If this is what it actually cost to run these services, that'd be one thing, but you know that we could probably cut this down by 95% and everyone that matters probably wouldn't lose a single cent of their pay.

America, where just visiting the doctor can mean financial ruin

$87 for the pulse ox?!? Oh hell no, you gotta negotiate this. It doesn't cost anywhere near that.

And a $159 for mileage? Did they drive you from the country or some shit?