Posted On: Thursday - May 24th 2018 2:37PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Healthcare Stupidity Peak Stupidity Roadshow
(This is the 3rd part in a series starting with this First Responders post.)
Just look at the space inside that thing. It's bigger than a New Yorker's living room. You could have high tea in there in the afternoon with your associates, or some kind of house party later on in the evening, when no one gets sick anyway. It looks like one expensive ride and it is! Still, even though it's very nice in there, can you guys speed up a bit, secure your tea and crumpets, and not drive like a bunch of sissies?
Everyone's a technician these days, I guess, but really, the term Emergency Medical Technician is not a bad one, if nobody could come up with anything else. No, I guess "ambulance driver" is not just outdated (nothing really wrong with that) but kind of a misnomer as these guys and gal do have a decent amount of medical/first-aid knowledge. The truth of it is, nowadays, that the job takes a lot of strength too, and possibly even on just as much of an everyday basis as firefighting does. This is due to the number of obese people that EMTs have to deal with on their calls. I know this from someone who has done this job part time. It is known to be hard on the back in the long-term, in fact. There are indeed plenty of women in this field, and I just hope they can hold up their end of the
Along with the firemen, EMTs also go out on a lot of false alarms. I doubt there are as many true false alarms, as in "never mind, go on back", but more just ridiculous calls for unnecessary rides to the hospital or symptoms of things that should just require an aspirin. The root cause of this problem of wasted expenditures is pretty much the cause of most societal problems, Socialism. If people who call up 911 on a whim every other month were to get a bill that truly covered it, they'd get well real quick-like, and you EMTees and EMTesses wouldn't be bothered with them anymore.
This brings up a second-hand-personal anecdote from a doctor friend. One guy had the ambulance bring him into the hospital for internal pains that could have been serious. They might HAVE been serious, but when my friend recommended the normal diagnostic procedure, the only way to find out, the man refused. OK, they sent him home. Oh, did I mention this was on the taxpayer's
Oh, yeah, my doctor friend got subsequently chewed out by the hospital administrator for "treating a PATIENT like that". OK, that was ignored like the BS it was. It's good to be
Back to the medivac Jet Rangers or whatever they've flying, for a moment, that is expensive as hell. I don't mean just expensive cost-wise, as helicopters require lots and lots of maintenance. I mean that these companies jack up the charges sky-high. A 30 mile, 15 minute ride could cost you, well, "somebody", $20,000. I will describe an incident in a subsequent post (the 911 one) in which the EMTs called out a helicopter for transport. Let me tell, you it is pretty much one ker-ching for each time a rotor blade comes around.
The Peak Stupidity blog has extolled the virtues of something America had a long, long time ago, free-market healthcare, back in our series on healthcare in China - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. The EMT "First Responder" business would probably be a whole lot different and less expensive for the taxpayer if done as it is in RED China. To emphasize the point, something tells me a limerick is called for:
(Keep in mind limericks are mostly about Nantucket, which is "in" Massachusetts, right? So keep a Mayor Quimby imitation of Ted Kennedy (the "Lyin' of the Seabed" voice in your head for this one - they drop the ending "r"s on words ending in "r' and add "r"s on the end of words that have none.)
Under free-market healthcare in Chiner,
I found that there is nothing fina.
Though the nurse was a RED,
her manners in bed,
make me glad least she had a vaginer.
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NOTE: Per Peak Stupidity legal department, the previous China free-market healthcare nurse photo was removed due to "apparently the girl may be a Filipina, working in a different kind of market". Our half-sincerest apologies.
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