Don’t call an ambulance

Toy ambulance car in a wooden shelf

🚑 👩‍⚕️

While listening to This Week in Google podcast one of the hosts said something quite shocking and it made me stop for a moment ✋

I very well know public healthcare in the USA is something they struggle with, to put it mildly. On the other hand, Spain enjoys this privilege (even if they cut back on investment every year, but that’s a topic for a different day 😒 ).

At home, we always had private insurance, given by my parent’s employers. At some point, I did pay for it myself (around 60€ a month with most of the things included). For a couple of years now, the companies I work have been paying it as part of their benefits packages. Meaning I don’t usually use the public system but the private one. Still, I’m entitled to use it if I want or need to.

Going back to the podcast, the host said something like they had to take their child to the hospital on their own instead of calling an ambulance. But they said it like it was normal, expected. You don’t call an ambulance unless it’s the situation is dire. The host didn’t go into details but they led to understand it had nothing to do with the severity of the situation but because how expensive would that be 🤯

Luckily I’ve never had to call an ambulance but I wouldn’t think twice of calling emergency services ⛑ In Spain you know you won’t have to pay for it, it’s a given right 🤷‍♂️

Now that I think about it there are certain cases where you might be required to pay 🤔 Situations like you’ve been hiking at your own risk, perhaps not following trails and something happened which led to emergency services to rescue you in a helicopter 🚁 I think they might make you pay something in those scenarios.

The USA has many great things, public healthcare is not one of them 🤕

Ricard

Comments

    1. @ricard_dev Now imagine your employer pays for your healthcare (at a massively discounted rate), and if you spend any significant time uninsured, you’ll pay higher rates forever. Would you quit an abusive job? Would you start a small business? The healthcare atrocity has its hooks in every aspect of life here, and it ruins everything it touches. Americans can’t see it because it’s been there their thole lives, they only see the worst parts. It’s cruelty and madness.

      Original Toot

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *