Gimmie girls using ambulances as taxis is common in America as well. They don’t pay taxes, and are judgment proof in litigation. Beats the hell out of waiting in the cold for a bus.
You would think the 911 service would have figured it out after the first 300 or 400 calls.
>>He said: “Someone is going to die while hard-pressed ambulance services are having their time wasted on these kind of callouts - that simply isn’t acceptable.”
But, it’s FREEEEEEEEEEEEE!
When it’s “free” of course you call an ambulance for a headache.
I listened to Michael Savage for a while. Way back, he mentioned a SF homeless guy that had racked up $80K in ambulance/ER visits that year, and I think it was only September.
We see this kind of thing in our ER all the time too. Lot’s of people call an ambulance because they can’t get a ride/afford a cab/whatever. There’s generally a strong sense of entitlement associated with these people. They typically expect us to feed them, wait on them hand and foot, load them up with dilaudid, and provide them with a free cab ride home and their complaints are rarely emergencies. As often as not, they’re looking for a fix and a script for percocets.
Plenty of stupid stuff comes through the front door too though. Some of them will come in 4-8 times per month. A little exploring reveals that they’re pulling the same crap at the other local hospitals too. This is their job, chasing narcotics at hospital ERs. Eventually, they get a dumb doctor who gives them their fix and writes them their script and it’s pay day. They are frequently white too btw.
I used to be a manager in a distribution center. We used a lot of temps. One came up missing and I went to look for her. I found her in the lounge on the phone. She was calling 911 to get them to take her to the doctor because she had a headache. I got on the phone with the operator and she wanted to know what was going on. I told her I’d take care of it. I had to explain to this chick how 911 worked. She really thought they were there to squire people around. Needless to say I got rid of her. Figured she was just too stupid to mess with.
Man, ain’t that the troof!
Nationalized Health Care: Not, “what could go wrong?” but “how can the gibsmedats abuse it?”
Twix-a-day? Really?
Dallas charges out of towners $200 for an ambulance run down the street - a lot more if they actually take you to the hospital. And they aren’t ‘in network’ with major insurers, so most of that is going to come out of pocket. So if you are even in Dallas and have a medical emergency, try to leave the fire department EMTs out of it if you can.
My previous comments not-withstanding, anyone involved with a fender-bender, regardless of fault, should go to the hospital to get checked out. Whip-lash can cause you to miss days from work and...well...that is why you have insurance, no?
Plus, you get to stay overnight with consistent health attendance and, at a minimum, one hot and one cot.
Go ahead, take some time off.
The root of the problem is the law that requires “no question asked” treatment, if it’s an “emergency”.
Have the ERs require insurance or payment upfront, then just watch taxpayer savings from the moochers finding an alternative.
Birmingham, huh..?
I don’t know what the chronic caller looks like, but it’s a fact that Birmingham has the very highest concentration of R.O.P. individuals in the whole country.
This might actually be a form of Phone Jihad.
80% of our health care expenses are spent on 20% of the population. Some of that goes to unfortunate people born with congenital problems. Some goes to end-of-life care. A LOT goes to Medicaid recipients who have no skin in the game. It is a free service for them. What happens when you offer something for free?
Until you fix that problem, there is no point in talking about healthcare “reform.”