a sobering new discovery, as of this morning...
(a short post script to yesterday's health-system-romp)
I feel drawn to send this quick clarifying note after my post yesterday. Because today I heard for the first time about: Ambulance Cover. I hadn’t come across it until filling in a permission slip for next week’s Year Four school trip. How had I missed this?
Apparently without cover, you pay if you need an ambulance. Around $1400 (£700ish) in cities; more in rural areas.
The cover itself is not costly – $109 for a family of four for a year – but again, that’s subjective. The mum who told me about it described witnessing someone get hit by a car, then telling the gathered crowd who ran to help ‘No! Don’t call an ambulance – I don’t have cover.’
What must this mean for health outcomes for others in similar situations? Those who never organised cover, or let it lapse in times of financial hardship, only to find themselves facing an emergency, or something that suggests the need for urgent attention: a possible stroke; a child’s asthma attack… or worse? It’s sobering to consider.
So although the NHS is both challenging and challenged, this made me appreciate the safety net it provides: no one need ever think twice about whether to call an ambulance.
No system is perfect. Clearly there are flaws here too. But now we’re all reassuringly covered for ambulance call outs (as of an hour ago) I am back to feeling comforted by what this system offers – along with a gnawing dread of how hard I’m going to find re-entry to the UK next year.
Though in the meantime I also can’t help wondering what other aspects of this system, and of this country, remain unknown unknowns…?!
Back to the soothing wisdom of the Stoics for me.