Finest health care system in the world.
Tracy [CA] residents will now have to pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency.
But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year which allows them to call 9-1-1 as many times as necessary.
Or, there’s the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead, they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.
“A $300 fee and you don’t even want to be thinking about that when somebody is in need of assistance,” said Tracy resident Greg Bidlack.
Residents will soon receive the form in the mail where they’ll be able to make their selection. No date has been set for when the charges will go into effect.
$300 would be six times the average Californian taxi fare. Taxis are the third world’s equivalent of an ambulance, fire engine, police wagon, wedding limo, cruise missile. Far more effective on account of their abundance and that the drivers generally know the neighborhood. So, an enterprising taxi company fits out a Chevy Suburban with bed bunks and plastic sheeting, a defib and oxygen masks – instant competition.
Well, well, isn’t this interesting. Something that numerous towns have been doing for hundreds of years for fire and rescue services is now a hot topic. For years many fire departments have offered a subscription option to pay for their services. It is typically tax deductable, as it consisitutes a donation to the department. Not a subscriber and the department will send a bill for services rendered. Helps pay for those big red trucks, cause in most towns the guys that are on those trucks are volunteers. Yeah, you don’t have to pay a salary to those folks. Talk about a deal, how many of YOU volunteer to do a job where there is a decent possibilty you might die.
BTW, this payment model goes back to Ben Franklin who organized the first fire department in the United States (talk about a communist socialist). To support the purchase of equipment, fire departments received money from insurance companies. You would have a marker on the outside of your house. If your house caught fire, the fire department would respond. If you had the marker they would fight the fire. No marker and they would watch the house burn down. You can still find antique stores that have these fire markers for sale.
Fast forward a couple of hundred years and we now have an EMS service offering nearly the same thing. Offer a subscription based service (good deal if you are elderly or have some serious health issues) or you can pay per trip to the hospital. If you have insurance, they will most likely bill them (or medicare/medicaid) and collect the money that way. Don’t/can’t pay it and the bill will probably go away (most do). No one is talking about refusing services to anyone who calls.
Oh, speaking of calls, if you actually read the article and use some common sense (which seems to be lacking around here) the bill doesn’t go to the person who calls 9-1-1. It goes to the person who uses the services. Furthermore, it seems if they don’t take you to the hospital, there isn’t any charge.
Boy, some of you folks are really funny. How do you survive in the real world??
#20-Mikey Twit-Canadian health care costs (government run) are lower per capita, with measurably better outcomes.
The fact that the Canadian Premier Danny Williams had to come to the US for a medical procedure not offered in Canada tends to render your claim false.
I can only imagine the nightmare regular folks must go through if the Newfoundland Premier must seek help elsewhere.
>>Like the fraud and abuse factored in by Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc.
Fraud and abuse happens, but unless a company is a monopoly like government or bailed out by government the market will take care of it.
Last month I was taken by ambulance to the emergency room, 4 miles, $645. Take a cab…
Or you could go old school and get the phone numbers for the local police and fire department and put them on speed dial.
I guess Flava Flav was right, 911 is a joke in yo town.
#13 ..So where does it stop Dallas or do we just provide anything anyone “needs”? ..
Old excuse. I don’t subscribe to the “everything is a slippery slope” theory that seem to block rational thinking with conservatives.
Any attempt at solving a problem be it social or governmental is met with some made up fear.It all goes back to seeing things in black and white versus shades of gray. It is astonishing.
I’ll accept your opinion that basic healthcare should remain a privilege but your slippery slope response has no merit.
#8 ..your head is up your semen collector, ..
Is that what you call an ass? I hope you don’t use that language at home. The next thing you know your daughter might start referring to her behind as daddy’s semen collector.
In rebutting Mikey Twit, #23 Dr Dodd wrote “The fact that the Canadian Premier Danny Williams had to come to the US for a medical procedure not offered in Canada tends to render your claim false.”
So one incident renders an entire body of statistics based on numerous cases false??? Your complete disregard of logic does, however, explain some of the comments you’ve made, as well as your belief in mythical demons and deities.
The fact is that Danny Williams is quite wealthy, having made a fortune in cable television, and America continues to provide the highest quality health care in the world, as long as cost is no object. When you can afford the very best, why settle for a local hospital? However, average Canadians who cannot afford the world’s top doctors remain better served by the Canadian health care system. That may be why they live longer while spending a little over half as much for health care. Or maybe Jesus loves Canadians more.
I hope you can afford the world’s best surgeon for that logic transplant you’ve been needing, because the first thing an American surgeon will X-ray is your wallet.
$300 is going to make a lot of people think twice about calling 911. If you are a Tracy resident and you notice someone down the block being mugged do you call the cops for $300 or hope that some other neighbor has already beat you to it and save the money?
Or if you notice smoke coming out of a neighbor’s window across the way, do you spend the $300 on 911, call the fire department or police department on their non-911 number, or do nothing?
I think it’s a bad idea to charge for 911, plain and simple.
So did they eliminate the phone tax to institute this policy? Is this possibly because unpatriotic residents of Tracy dropped their local phone company to give money to Skype?
#28 Gary
Thanks, you beat me to it!
Again, what was that I said about ideologies?
You don’t think person with a functioning brain(hope you get yours soon Dr.Dodd!), let alone a Canadian wouldn’t go wherever they want for the best health care they could get, as fast as they could get if they had the money? Who knows if he would have been served just as well if he stayed, that’s his and his doctors business, not mine or yours. But hypothetically, say he had to wait, say 2 weeks for said procedure locally or within Canada, without any danger to himself, or being the rich man that he is, which I do not begrudge him, can fly to the first place that offers said procedure the next day, who in his/her right mind wouldn’t take the latter option?
As I stated in my previous facts, which you’re free to research to your hearts content…ah but we’ve seen that facts don’t fit into your ideologies, and we know with you, what always wins in that conflict in your teeny mind.
If the $300 charge in Tracy for 9-1-1 deters residents from calling, and they open the front door and scream for help instead, they’ll be arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace. Let’s see now, the fine for that comes to…… oh, $300!
Next year, they’ll be making even deeper budget cuts, and they’ll have to outsource their emergency calls to an operator in New Delhi who also provides technical support for Samsung printers.
The result of living in a nation where the only justification for existence is ‘how much money can it/he/she make’. Things/people that do not generate enough income do not deserve to exist. Carrying this philosophy to an extreme is having some very serious consequences.
The signs are there, and thing’s are gonna get much worse. Emigrate before it’s too late.
This is a great first step. We should slowly roll back all our socialist fire brigade, police and armed forces. We are an nation built on individual efforts.
The second amendment should be the sole guarantor of our safety. Shoot, if you want to live. There should be no such thing as murder – Might is Right.
#33 Santa Maria
Ooooh yeahhh, ANARCHY! Makes for entertaining TV! I’ll be watching from a safe comfortable distance, but go ahead, knock yourselves out.
as someone who lives in Tracy. The city has outsourced the 911 center and now the center has to show a profit.
@Santa Maria
How can you stand to post on the socialist internet since it’s been built, maintained and financed by so many others? Maybe you should take the individual effort to just cut the wires there in your bunker and put your beloved gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Don’t worry, no one will call 911 for your carcass.
#1 It computes in CA after they had their health care reform, created a nanny state and bankrupted the government. Here in TN we don’t have to go there.
I’m afraid # 8 has my vote.
Of course when the wastrel spend thrifts running the Federal government finish bankrupting it as I expect we won’t need 911 because nobody will be able to afford health care nor will the government be providing such. Maybe free body bags though you have to admit the people wearing body bags don’t really need them or care.
There’s going to be lots of dead people in Tracy.
#39 Fortunately, there’s a toll-free number to report dead people. They only charge if someone is alive.