Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

You Could Pay A Fee For Calling 911 If You Abuse The Service

It turns out calling 911 isn’t free.  Imagine that.    911 communications may actually cost you money.  People who pay taxes aren’t the only ones who are fitting the bill anymore.  In some places ambulances are charging fat surcharges for the extra equipment necessary for the ambulance ride?  How much does an ambulance ride cost if you are morbidly obese?  How does an extra $500 in addition to the base rate.
911-CommunicationsBut even people who don’t require extra equipment will have to start paying extra for the right to make the call to 911 communications.  How much extra?  How much will calling 911 cost in Tracy, California?  Well, if you want to pay a $48 per year fee, you can call 911 communications centers  as many times as you want.  But if you don’t want to pay the fee, how does $300 per call sound.  If you’re having a stroke, calling 911 communications may just cost you your arm and your leg.

That’s right.  $300 to call 911 communications for an emergency.  Or perhaps the problem is too many people are calling for nonemergency reasons.  If you can’t get the frequent abusers who show up at the hospital by ambulance for nonemergent problems to stop calling 911, maybe you can collect their $300 by garnishing their welfare and disability checks.
At some point, our country is going to have to stop excusing the actions of  the economic tax abusers and start implementing personal responsibility with real consequences that hold folks accountable for their actions.   I  think charging  a fee is an excellent deterant to unnecssary abuse of a system that is overwhelmed with nonurgent convenience care.

*This blog post was originally published at Happy Hospitalist*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles