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Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

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Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#191

Post by vijayr »

throwaway0255 wrote: post #48

I injured myself and needed to go to the ER. The injury wasn't life threatening, but I definitely needed to go to the hospital immediately. I called an Uber. I don't have the time or expertise to do the months of legalese and calculus it would take me to understand my insurance policy, so I have no idea how much an ambulance ride would have cost me. $0? $400? $15000? None of those numbers would surprise me. As best I…

They sent me a bill for over $900. For taking a picture, and giving me tylenol and an ace bandage.

That is awful :(

Imagine someone making minimum wage. 900$ is huge for most people.

Honest question - outside of politics, is there anything a person on the road do to help make this situation better (other than not falling sick)? Any company/org working on solutions?

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#192

Post by saint_fiasco »

skrause wrote: post #157
briandear wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance should be used for what it is — an financial instrument to protect against unforeseen and catastrophic financial loss. Car insurance doesn’t pay for tires or oil while it could be argued that bad tires increase the risk of accident. However tires and oil are an inextricable requirements to owning a car. This idea that health care should be paid for by someone else has always puzzled me. It’s the equivalent…

> Health care costs have spiraled out of control because of the detachment of who is paying from who is receiving the service — much like higher education. No, they have spiralled out of control because health care is something where no real market can exists, so you need good regulation (which the USA doesn't have). If you have an urgent and life-threatening health problem you can't shop around for a cheaper hospita…

Why not?

You also can't live without food but there is a market for that. Even when you don't have time to cook and need food on short notice, there are plenty of fast food and delivery options available.

There is nothing impossible about a situation where a hospital has a reputation for being cheap but having long wait times while another hospital is more expensive but has shorter wait times. Then in an urgency you wouldn't need to shop around, you would decide based on each hospital's reputation.

Unfortunately hospitals don't publish their median wait times, patient outcomes or even their prices. If they were forced to publish those things, maybe a market would emerge.

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#193

Post by DanBC »

briandear wrote: post #136
blhack wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is pretty much nothing that infuriates me more than the health insurance system. Here is just one example (other than your ambulance example, which is like some trolley-car problem come real): We use "insurance" for routine medical examinations which are supposedly to be done regardless of health. We use "insurance" for YEARLY checkups. The absurdity of this is on par with insuring yourself against getting hung…

Insurance should be used for what it is — an financial instrument to protect against unforeseen and catastrophic financial loss. Car insurance doesn’t pay for tires or oil while it could be argued that bad tires increase the risk of accident. However tires and oil are an inextricable requirements to owning a car. This idea that health care should be paid for by someone else has always puzzled me. It’s the equivalent…

I'm puzzled when Americans say this, because their government spends far more on healthcare than other governments, and also doesn't provide universal healthcare.

The US is the worst situation: expensive government provision, that doesn't prevent the harm caused by lack of access, but which also causes harm with too much access for the wealthy.

> It’s the equivalent of food being “free.”

Even the US provides free food to the poor.

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#194

Post by uoaei »

domenzain wrote: post #107
blhack wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is pretty much nothing that infuriates me more than the health insurance system. Here is just one example (other than your ambulance example, which is like some trolley-car problem come real): We use "insurance" for routine medical examinations which are supposedly to be done regardless of health. We use "insurance" for YEARLY checkups. The absurdity of this is on par with insuring yourself against getting hung…

It makes good financial sense for insurers to push the insured to take preventative measures. An insurer should provide incentive to bring a building up to code to avoid a costly fire. The option to simply raise prices accounting for the fire leaves out the business of those who cannot afford it: the people leaving in a building that's not up to code.

The point seems to be more that "insurance" as a word betrays the original intention of the service while the current state of affairs demonstrates how much the concept has been bastardized.

Insurance is for those events where you don't expect a gruesome injury and need to insure, or hedge, against those one-offs. Preventative care isn't the same idea because you expect to get older and things to fail slowly. But barring any conditions or disorders, this isn't insurance against external sources of damage but just an action taken against inevitable consequences of having an organic body that tries to keep itself in a delicate and easily-broken balance for 50+ years.

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#195

Post by trts »

Had a bad bicycle accident about five years ago. No taxi would stop for me as it probably looked like I'd been in a drunken brawl. Uber or Lyft would have been nice, as I could have probably texted the driver not to be alarmed but that I needed a lift to the ER (at that point I still had not gotten a smartphone). I ended up walking 2.5 miles to the nearest hospital.

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#196

Post by frangipane »

solatic wrote: post #188
Xylakant wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely makes sense to insure routine medical examinations. If they’re not covered, people don’t do them. Many routine examinations uncover conditions that are not critical yet and easy to treat before they turn into a costly nightmare. (e.g. routine skin checks uncover potential cancer before it spreads, tooth checks uncover problems before they require expensive replacement) It’s an investment, not only healt…

But that's the difference between buying insurance, which is an actuarial product you buy to guard against unfortunate events, and buying a service or subscription, which is available for your use when you desire to use it. Let's ask a simple question to determine which is which in the US: because attending your annual checkups reduces your risk of needing expensive treatment, somebody who attends their annual checku…

>attending your annual checkups reduces your risk of needing expensive treatment

Btw, there's no evidence of this.

Zero...zip...zilch...none.

http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#197

Post by bmmayer1 »

endisukaj wrote: post #187
dbancajas wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a good place to live? What about racism etc?

You'll be hard-pressed to find the sort of systematic racism found in the US (especially by institutions) anywhere in Europe. Sure, you might get the occasional glance if you are black especially in Eastern Europe and it's mostly because out of curiosity since there are not many African immigrants in ex-Communist countries as there are in, say, France. But other than that you'll be fine. I should say though that East…

Have you ever been in a Parisian suburb?

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#198

Post by DanBC »

bmelton wrote: post #7

If you don't get bogged down in details of the service, I see this as generally net good. For many, ambulance rides are prohibitively expensive, and while I certainly wouldn't be cost-conscious taking an ambulance in the event of a seizure or heart attack, for something like a broken arm, or non-life-threatening ailment, an Uber/Lyft/Cab is a good alternative to trying to drive myself. Beyond that, I'd like to see st…

> Beyond that, I'd like to see statistics on whether people ride-sharing to emergency rooms / urgent care facilities was freeing up ambulances or causing them to sit idle. I suspect it's the former, which would mean ambulances could be more available for more people with more serious conditions, but I could be wrong.

I'd also like to see whether ride-sharing increases the number of people who attend ED.

"I can't justify getting an ambo, so I won't attend" vs "I'm not wasting an ambo, so it's okay if I attend".

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#199

Post by pvinis »

pvinis wrote: post #133
throwaway0255 wrote: post #48

I injured myself and needed to go to the ER. The injury wasn't life threatening, but I definitely needed to go to the hospital immediately. I called an Uber. I don't have the time or expertise to do the months of legalese and calculus it would take me to understand my insurance policy, so I have no idea how much an ambulance ride would have cost me. $0? $400? $15000? None of those numbers would surprise me. As best I…

Why did you need a throwaway for this comment?

I'm honestly asking. It's a very good and valid comment and I didn't see any obvious reasons why they might decide to use a throwaway account.

Re: Cities with Uber Have Lower Rates of Ambulance Usage

#200

Post by indubitable »

pornel wrote: post #172
dantheman wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health insurance system in the US is about as far away as you can get from capitalism. It's heavily regulated, a cartel, the prices are not transparent, and there is no competition (existing hospitals have to approve new hospitals, etc).

US has a market for regulation: lobbying is legal and elections are funded by donors. So I'd say problems caused by the regulation are pure capitalism: it's just a new, more cost-efficient way of beating the competition.

It's not really new. Lobbying the government, or whatever group has the monopoly on 'enforcement', to benefit private interests goes back to the beginning of civilization. The interesting thing is that this is one of the most ideologically divisive issues when framed as it typically is, yet really I think it's something most people could really agree on. People pursuing a "small government" certainly have little love for corporations, but the idea is that when the power and breadth of government is strictly limited then their role as a corrupting force, which is certainly by far the most efficient way of beating the competition, is minimized.

Going the other direction you can have a big government with extensive powers that tries to force fair play through extensive regulation, as ours does. But this has been tried over and over again, and it invariably trends towards corruption. I think that particularly in a democracy, this outcome is going to be quite difficult to avoid. It seems that these basic facts should be the starting point of discussion, as opposed to the point where people have long since splintered off and polarized themselves towards opposite extremes.

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