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Passengers Who Call Uber Instead Of An Ambulance Put Drivers At Risk (buzzfeed.com)
Sick people are increasingly using ride-hail to get to the emergency room, putting drivers in an uncomfortable position and a potentially tricky legal bind, BuzzFeed News reports. From the report: Mike Fish was driving for Uber 10 minutes outside of Boston when he picked up a second passenger in his Uber Pool who, he said, seemed "out of it, drowsy -- almost sedated." When the drowsy passenger asked him if Boston's Mass General hospital was the nearest emergency room, "that set off a red flag," Fish told BuzzFeed News. "I said, 'Do you need the ER?' He said yes. It came out that, over the last few days, he'd been passing out and losing consciousness." But instead of calling an ambulance to get the urgent medical attention he needed, the sick passenger called an Uber Pool. The shared ride would save him a few bucks, but it meant he'd have to wait for Fish to drop off the first passenger before he'd get to the ER. "I was a little nervous," Fish said. "I didn't know what was going to happen."
Ride-hail drivers are, by and large, untrained, self-employed workers driving their own cars on a part-time basis. They're not medical professionals. But as health care costs have risen and ride-hail has become more pervasive, people are increasingly relying on Uber and Lyft drivers to get them to the hospital when they need emergency care. A recent (yet to be peer-reviewed) study found that, after Uber enters new markets, the rates of ambulance rides typically go down, meaning fewer people call professionals in favor of the cheaper option.
Ride-hail drivers are, by and large, untrained, self-employed workers driving their own cars on a part-time basis. They're not medical professionals. But as health care costs have risen and ride-hail has become more pervasive, people are increasingly relying on Uber and Lyft drivers to get them to the hospital when they need emergency care. A recent (yet to be peer-reviewed) study found that, after Uber enters new markets, the rates of ambulance rides typically go down, meaning fewer people call professionals in favor of the cheaper option.
More like $15-$25 vs $500-$1000+ more then a few bucks.
You get to keep all the cool cash. But no liability! Hey, it worked with "uber is not a taxi company" schtick, why not now?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ambulances cost money no matter where you are. The only difference is what entity soaks up the cost of the ambulance. In the US, the cost of the service is placed directly on the person using the service, unless that person pays protection money to the mafia; er, excuse me. That should read premiums to an insurance company.
After a motorcycle accident I was transported to a hospital for a strained shoulder. 24 hours later a firefighter showed up at my door and wedged an invoice under the threshhold. The bill? $1750.
Now this story has an amicable ending because insurance covered this, however like all american healthcare its invoice-first. You're on the hook to pay for this service until you can claim or prove hardship, which in this case required two pay stubs and a gas bill. so if you get paid biweekly, thats a month without paying this bill, which is more than enough time for collectors to begin calling. This assumes you can immediately return to work to get paid, and most ambulance rides mean you arent going back to work anytime soon.
the irony is that if companies like Uber paid any taxes at all, we might have a competent ambulance service that didnt cost as much as a used car.
Good people go to bed earlier.
but honestly, who wants to pay for single payer healthcare? I mean, the cost alone is -$17 trillion
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I've had to go to the ER for a non life threatening injury that prevented me from driving myself. I wish I would have though to call Uber or a cab. It would have saved me thousands.
Some people are in bad shape and need medical attention or at least monitoring during their ride to the hospital. They clearly shouldn't be using Uber.
But others are stable and just need a ride. They clearly shouldn't be tying up an ambulance that someone else actually needs. In fact, Phoenix has a program where the fire department calls (and pays for) a cab for people like this who call 911.
So a bright-line rule for Uber drivers not to take people to hospitals would be bad. And as noted in the article but cropped from the summary, people take taxis to the hospital all the time. Both taxi and Uber drivers need to (gasp) use their judgment to decide whether to take a given passenger on a given ride. This sort of situation doesn't seem any different.
with a substantial bureaucratic overhead added in
As opposed to the current complete lack of bureaucratic overhead in the US healthcare system?
Ezekiel 23:20
Is the incidence of use "ride sharing" (Uber/Lyft/etc) over medical transport higher than say a cab?
If not, this is a non-issue.
At least in Canada there is a good chance your driver is a doctor from the Caribbean or Eastern Europe. Our Ambulance service is pretty good here in Canada but you would be shocked at how many Uber drivers are doctors from poorer countries.
I have only had to call an ambulance once in my life. The one time was for my stepdaughter who passed out and hit her head. By the time they got there, she was up and on her feet. She said she felt ok now, but they took her to the hospital anyway. The hospital is about 1/2 mile away from my apartment. The doctors said that she just got up too quick and whited out. Nothing to be concerned with and the bump on her head was not a concussion. About a month later, I got the bill. My out of pocket expense was $800 for a 2 minute ride. That was not even the the hospital bill! That was just for the ride in the ambulance! It was the first time I called an ambulance. I will never call again unless it is absolutely necessary! No wonder people call Uber!
Here in Finland the Social Insurance Institution actually will pay for your cab ride to a hospital for the part that exceeds 25 euros. That is, if you take a cab and the cost is 300 because of a long trip, you will pay 25 euros, the rest is covered by the state. Same goes for ambulances, the patient has to pay 25 euros for the ride to a hospital/nearest point of treatment. After that, once the patient is admitted to care, if he/she needs to be moved to another hospital for exams or treatment at a better equiped facilit, it is covered for by the single payer medical system, ie. the patient doesn't pay a dime for it.
I work for the Hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa and as the largest district in the country we're in charge of all the highly specialized care in Finland, for example all of the really complex surgeries are handled here. Because we're one of the larger countries in Europe, this means we routinely get patients from up north in Lapland traveling distances of close to 1000 kilometers to reach urgent treatment here. In situations of extreme urgency, helicopters are used, this is usually done for example in cases where the patient has an entire limb detached due to an accident and needs to be operated within hours for recovery to be viable. Donated organs are also routinely flown in with copters,
Obviously this isn't cheap, as transfering patients over long distances costs both in time of treatment staff as well as equipment an fuel costs. All that being said, our total medical expenditure for the public system is around 4040 dollars per capita, which is about 40,8 % of the 9890 dollars per capita spent in the States, according to the OECD..
In fact, as I've said before and I'll say again: every single universal model in existence is cheaper than the current US model, which is why every other OECD member has adopted some variation of a universal model, not all of which are single payer.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
In the USA, if you call an ambulance, it will come pick you no matter what even if you don't have the ability to pay.
This is not true in Michigan where I live for residential addresses. If that address has an unpaid bill sent to collections they won't respond unless you can prove you are not the same resident. I live in an apartment complex and had to call EMS once and spent ~5 minutes on the phone confirming that I was not the former resident who had an unpaid bill. That's some seriously fucked up shit right there. I'm just lucky the delay in dispatching a unit wasn't life threatening. That time.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The hospital won't come after you for that $100k. Not with any real force. Ambulance companies are billed out of a completely different bucket and they _will_ get their money. Ambulance companies have notoriously bad debt collection practices that most poor people are well aware of.
Furthermore, you can't file bankruptcy anymore. Not for real. All you can do is restructure your debt and pay it. It's one of the major legacies of the Bush Jr administration. They gutted the laws. If the judge likes you, you can pay slowly, but you'll still pay. If the judge doesn't like you your just boned. They'll order wage garnishment on behalf of private companies for amounts they see fit. If you're in the south you might end up in a debtors prison via contempt or court charges. The judge orders you to pay, you can't pay, they lock you up for contempt.
There's been a major shift in how debt works in this country that nobody really talks about. Considering our media is largely owned by billionaires that's not surprising. Regardless, what used to be unsecured debt is now secured against all future earnings and any property you might own when you die.
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Most times an Ambulance isn't required. I don't see a problem here. If they choose an Uber over an ambulance, that's their chose.
Yeah. You self-diagnose and your results depend on how accurate your self-diagnosis is.
Guess wrong, you die. That's your choice. "I don't see a problem here" either, assuming "sometimes you guess wrong and die" is not considered a "problem".
They had to vote on the ACA bill first before they could find out what was in it.
Yes... the Democrats passed the ACA after 79 hearings, and about two months of discussion, including multiple amendments from Republicans: https://mic.com/articles/17630...
I was paying attention to the Republican complaint at how "quickly" ACA was passed right up until I saw how they decided to do in the "repeal and replace" bill, which was NO hearings, a bill written in secret, and an attempt to pass the bill before the budget office even stated what the cost would be.
Not to mention provisions being added to the bill handwritten in the margins overnight before voting... which no senators or representatives actually admitted to adding https://www.vox.com/policy-and....
The Republicans did everything that they accused the Democrats of doing, but even more so.
Paying insurance premiums does not mean that your ambulance ride will be covered. A family member used an ambulance and it was not an "in network service provider" so the cost was not covered. Same for the ER doc that saw my family member.
As if you call 911 and ask "I have [insurance provider]. Is that ambulance in network? No? Please send an ambulance that is in network. I'll wait" and then get to the ER and ask, "I have [insurance provider]. Are you in network? No? Then I'll wait until an ER doctor who is in network is available."
And they won't negotiate rates, and will happily send your bills to debt collection and ruin your credit rating.
Frankly, the cost of ambulance rides and ER doctors should be legally regulated, with mandatory coverage by insurance providers, to prevent this. Maybe there's a copay, and it might vary based on your coverage, but it shouldn't be a surprise.