Reason #9,243,543 why government is to blame for the high cost of medical care

AP ^ | 9/1/2009 | JOAN LOWY and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE

[DManA]

NTSB wants new rules for medical helicopters . . . The NTSB recommendations urge the Federal Aviation Administration to, among other things, require medical helicopter operators to install autopilot systems that can help solo pilots, terrain awareness monitoring to help pilots navigate in bad conditions, night-vision systems that help navigate in the dark and flight data recorders.

[Skooz]

bump for later reference

[KarlInOhio]

Most likely result: 1 easily trackable pilot life saved, 5,000 accident and heart attack victims die because they have to be tossed in the back of pickup trucks and hauled to emergency rooms.

[socialismisinsidious]

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[ClayinVA]

Med-flights crash all the time and a lot of them have been budget operations. Plus, they normally kill 4 people, Pilot, Nurse, Paramedic, and the patient. It is a big problem out west for some reason. Not so much on the east coast.

[precisionshootist]

Hey, don’t worry government involvement in healthcare won’t result in rationing!

right!

[Mark was here]

I know of a couple whose son had a severe brain injury, (After a while in a coma he mostly recovered.) He was helicoptered from out in the woods up north to a hospital in Saginaw. There was a separate charge, several thousand, for transporting him from the Helicopter to inside the hospital. I doubt it really cost that much, just another charge to pass on to insurance companies.

[KarlInOhio]

There was a separate charge, several thousand, for transporting him from the Helicopter to inside the hospital.

That's the type of crap that gets people begging for socialized medicine. The only thing I can figure is that they take the cost of installing and running the helipad and then divide it by the number of patients they serve who actually pay and that's your bill. If you have your fancy helicopter and only use it once a month you'll get killed on the itemized bill.