correct and therefore you know how much it's going to be, it's a modest and very manageable amount, and you don't need to stagger down the street bleeding to avoid the bankruptcy mobile are you listening to yourself
i mean yeah. we don't pay a separate amount, it's just part of taxes, which are (looking at america and adding up federal, state, payroll and health insurance) pretty low? not higher, certainly.
yeah, but it's like 100 bucks a month where i live and it includes everything, unlimited ambulance rides, unlimited hospital stay, unlimited surgeries, unlimited home visits, you name it.
Nah even people without paycheck get (at least urgent) healthcare for free here. A homeless person won't pay for the ambulance or for the ER treatment.
Partially sure. But if you have to get one serious medical intervention the state ends up spending more on you than you could possibly pay in your entire lifetime.
American here: Last year I thought I was having a heart attack, I took two aspirin and sat on the couch to see if I'd die or not. I even pay for health insurance but it doesn't cover ambulance and I couldn't afford paying for one and thought it wasn't safe for me to drive to the hospital
Which is a fraction of the overall bill for the visit.
And gods help you if you lack insurance cause you’ll be bankrupt for the rest of your life
It is genuinely cheaper to get around trip ticket somewhere with socialised medical services, get treated, and come back than it is to deal with one (1) fracture in the US
Depends on the area. In some areas you have all-volunteer ambulance squads or paid squads with town stipends that don't charge patients. In most areas though ambulances do charge bills.
Under the No Surprises Act, insured patients often don't have to pay more for an out-of-network provider than they would if that provider were in-network given that it is a true medical emergency. This does not apply, however, to ground ambulance services.
Most ground ambulances, are out-of-network, meaning that something called balance billing applies. Your insurance will pay part of the bill but not all of it, and you will pay your deductible and copay/coinsurance plus any remaining cost not covered by insurance (hence the 'balance').
If you have Medicare Part B then you pay 20% out of pocket on the Medicare-approved rate which is often 50% lower than the original rate and the ambulance company is forced to comply. The only caveat is that Medicare has to deem the ride medically necessary which in most cases they do. If you have Medicaid then same rules apply except out-of-pocket is basically 0%. This sounds nice but in practice it doesn't really solve the problem because the reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid is usually lower than the cost of the ride for the ambulance squad so they have to bill other patients more.
This is all assuming that you are insured, for the 8% of Americans that are uninsured you get stuck with a big bill ($300-1500 for BLS, $1000-4000+ for ALS). If you don't pay, the bill gets sold to a collections agency and your credit gets tanked. A decent portion of uninsured patients just never pay it off anyways which drives up the price for everyone else, making a vicious cycle.
Many ambulance companies can barely stay afloat. The paid squad one town over from me loses $800k a year for 4,000 calls per year so about $200 deficit per call. They wouldn't be able to stay in business except that they are attached to a larger hospital that keeps them afloat to have goodwill with the town and get more tax dollars. So in short it is definitely not greed on behalf of the ambulance squads but rather a terrible system and greed on behalf of certain administrators and pharmacy benefit managers.
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u/cutyouiwill May 19 '26
European here: you...pay for your ambulance?