Save at any cost: how a call for an ambulance in the USA can cost tens of thousands of dollars - ForumDaily
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Save at any cost: how to call an ambulance in the USA can cost tens of thousands of dollars

In September 2017, Sonna Anderson rode a horse in North Dakota. At some point, the animal got scared, jerked and stumbled, dropping its owner. Sonna fell, suffering a head injury and breaking three ribs. She was transported to the hospital by ambulance helicopter. For this trip, the woman owed more than 41 thousand dollars from her own pocket. Sonna is not alone - such stories are not uncommon in the United States.

Фото: Depositphotos

The 911 record shows that the ambulance got to Sonna, the 60-year-old judge from Bismarck, in 20 minutes. She was laid on hard stretchers and got ready to be taken to the hospital, which was an hour's journey, when a medical helicopter arrived at the scene. The woman's husband repeatedly asked why it was impossible to take her with a car and why there was a helicopter here, but the staff convinced the couple that this was a necessity. For what? This, according to the woman, no one explained, writes CNN.

After the trip, Anderson received an account from Valley Med Flight on $ 54 727,26. Her insurance company, Sanford Health Plan, paid 13 697,73 dollars. This left Sonna with an account in $ 41 029,53. At the same time, according to calculations and records, the company that carried out the transportation spent no more than 45 minutes for the woman.

Tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars for departure

Anderson is not alone. CNN contacted insurance companies in every state - almost all of them said that they had heard from patients like Sonna complaints about air ambulances, and people's indignation was steadily growing. The amounts vary greatly - the editors found options from 34 thousand dollars to more than 533 thousand US dollars for a domestic flight!

A 2017 federal investigation found that costs for the average air ambulance flight doubled from 2010 to 2014. Some states saw even greater increases—for example, in New Mexico, air ambulance flights became 229% more expensive between 2006 and 2015.

A few examples:

  • in Michigan, the family was to send home a dying relative who was seriously ill in Arizona. For taking him by air to the hospice, the family was billed for 547 725 dollars;
  • a family from Wisconsin had to fly a child with a malignant brain tumor to Houston to be seen by a specialist - the bill for the flight was $62;
  • A helicopter air ambulance transported a man from a hospital in Winter Haven, Florida, to an Orlando hospital - about an hour away by car, for which he received a bill for $31,253.33 (obviously this does not only happen on cross-country flights);
  • in Arkansas, an in-state man’s flight to a special x-ray cost $ 37,850.

Patients were desperate to do something. Pursued by collectors, hundreds of them went to court. But only a few helped.

Insurance commissioners and insurance associations tried to help: they sent letters, begging Congress to do something about “unreasonably high and unregulated rates,” as one Mississippi commissioner for insurance put it. However, autonomous legislation, even with bipartisan support, has not gone away.

The cost of these flights is not regulated by Obamacare. Instead, they are subject to the Law on the Abolition of 1978 Aviation Technology of the Year, as a result of which the state was able to control air tickets and routes until conventional ambulances appeared. In October, the Federal Law on Aviation Reorganization created a committee to solve this problem, but it could not work out a final solution, experts say.

States also tried. North Dakota, West Virginia and Texas passed cost restriction legislation but were stopped by local courts. The judges consistently concluded that air ambulance regulation is a federal, rather than local, issue related to the Law on the Regulation of Air Transport.

Фото: Depositphotos

Money bag

The three largest medical carriers in the United States are now owned not by hospitals, but by private investment companies. Bain Capital acquired Air Medical for 1 a billion dollars in 2010 and sold it five years later for 2 a billion dollars.

As private companies entered the market, prices rose. Between 2010 and 2014, the median price that airlines charged Medicare doubled to almost 30 000 US dollars.

New Mexico state senator Liz Thomson said that a statewide survey found an 98% increase in the amount charged for non-insured air travel between the years 2009 and 2015. When patients travel by helicopters that do not belong to intranet transport, insurance will cover little or nothing at all. Thomson presented a bill that was supposed to change the situation, but it did not pass in the state.

According to independent experts, many patients simply do not need such help. Most of these flights do not apply to cases of injury in which a person actually needs to be transported by air - the real need is no more than 15%. The vast majority of flights are simply transporting patients from one facility to another.

Lawyers say private operators are not the only ones who make money: county governments and city hospitals that may have their own ambulance services also see this system as a revenue stream that supports their general programs.

Representatives of the air transport industry claim that, although single flights “may seem expensive,” they are “very cost-effective” compared to creating new rural specialized assistance or expanding emergency medical services.

Congress and law

Probably Congress will pass a law that will regulate the aviation ambulance industry. The law, which was drafted in October, created an advisory committee that will focus on increasing price transparency. The law gives the Department of Transport and the Department of Health and Human Services the right to create new rules. He establishes a hotline and a website to track complaints, and also creates an attorney position for aviation consumers.

For Anderson, the decision came late. She took her own steps. Instead of paying $41 out of pocket, she offered to pay $049,53 on top of the $4100 that insurance paid. For three months after this offer - 13% more than the insured amount - the company was silent, but in the end it still agreed to make concessions.

Anderson has recovered from her injury. And Cody, her horse, is fine too. An X-ray taken after the fall revealed another health problem that was previously unknown, so the woman is grateful for this situation. But the anxiety that arose as a result of the psychologically traumatic experience still haunts her. Sonna says it's unfair for air ambulances to charge people more than what a professional surgeon would pay, and hopes change will come so people won't have to deal with such cases in the future.

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