The city of Loma Linda, California, is now offering insurance against its residents having to pay per-incident fees when Fire Department medical teams answer 911 calls.
According to Jeff Bender, who is the Fire Chief for the City of Loma Linda, California, residents of the city now have the option of paying a yearly "voluntary subscription" and enrolling in a program that will cover the costs of Fire Department medical personnel responding to 911 calls. Those residents who pay the fee - currently Forty-Eight Dollars per year - will be exempt from having to pay Three-Hundred Dollars per incident (Four Hundred for non-residents) when medical personnel respond to an emergency.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Chief Bender assured me that there is no provision being made to alter the 911 system so that subscribers to the program receive priority treatment, and the Chief said that his department will continue to respond to all calls in the same way it has in the past. However, people who receive services and are not subscribers of the "Fire Medical" program will be expected to pay for every support incident, and the city will be turning uncollected bills over to dept-collection agencies.
Local municipalities have been billing accident victims for ambulance and paramedic services for a while now: my wife got a bill from the fire department in a neighboring community after she took an ambulance ride a couple of years ago. What's different in Loma Linda is that the city is willing to insure citizens against the costs of medical services directly, without them having to rely on their medical insurance carriers to cover the expense. This is, IMNSHO, an admission by the department that the costs of collecting its fees directly from insurance carriers have proven too high to be practical, and may also be evidence of a deteriorating insurance coverage pattern in general, as HMO's and other penny-pinchers try to nickel-and-dime their customers to death.
Of course, such municipal maneuvering is nothing new: "The Ancient Political Fishlike Smell" that Ogden Nash wrote about so long ago will continue to spread its ordure among twenty-first century voters, just as it always has. Call it what you will, it's another tax, as inevitable as death and cost externalization.
Bill Horne
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