We’ve already seen that unconscious patients can end up with huge medical bills when an ambulance takes them to a hospital that doesn’t accept their insurance. But even if you’re conscious enough to point the driver toward the right hospital, you could still be stuck owing hundreds, even thousands, of dollars because that ambulance ride isn’t covered by your insurance.
As a sheriff’s deputy in his Rocky Mountain community, Don* regularly serves others with bills or summons from hospitals, doctor’s offices, or law firms related to medical services. But when Don’s wife needed an emergency lift to the hospital, even he didn’t expect that the short ambulance trip would result in thousands of dollars in bills.
Don, whose wife has since passed away, says that he’s come to learn more than he ever dreamed he would about medical transports and the resulting bills.
“I just could not believe the flood of bills that we’d get,” he recalls. “After the first experience with the ambulance, I didn’t do that anymore. I’d carry her and put her in the car.”
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Highway robbery
ReplyDeleteNo, this can't be right. My president told me that Obammy care was going to fix everything!
ReplyDeleteMy father was transported by Salisbury ambulance five years ago but died at the hospital. He is still getting bills.
ReplyDeleteThis is why you donate the yearly membership to a fire company near you. ThAT covers any ambulance service.
ReplyDelete9:20 im sure youll want to wait for your good ole local station ambulance to come get you when you have an event 100 miles from them right? Its not a realistic approach. The medical billing system is free reign and we are the hunted. No politician wants to touch it. Medical billing is the most crooked and unregulated system in this country.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is people take advantage and we are paying for it. It's a daily occurrence in place like Baltimore where they use the ambulance like a taxi service knowing full well the bill won't be paid. I'm not kidding. They have a dr's appointment and call 911 to say they have a severe headache or some other lie and they get picked up and transported either right where the appointment is or nearby.
ReplyDeleteMy ambulance bill for transport from the scene of an accident at the Centre at Salisbury to Peninsula Regional was over $600.00. No IV's, just a backboard and transport. But then again, I was in no shape to ask or argue about what it was going to cost. Even so, I thought it was rather high when I sent the bill to my insurance company.
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ReplyDeleteThey have to get that booze money from somewhere.I know I drank some of it.