EMS Budget – Special Village Board Meeting 8/24/09
The privatizers are back.
The Village Board met tonight to discuss the “crisis” with the EMS budget. Chris Thomas explained that because of decreasing volunteerism, the EMS budget would have to see an increase of 25% next year. The likely figure for next year will be $425,000. I’m guessing there are about 8000 people served by the ambulance. (Ulysses, Trumansburg, and parts of Hector and Covert) $425,000 / 8000 = $53/person/year. Please, let me pay it. Don’t start billing. Don’t get into bed with the damn private for profit insurance companies. I’ve been telling them for a year, and they still don’t get it. If we cost shift part of our $53 tax burden, onto the insurance companies, they will shift it back onto us in the form of higher premiums. The cost to the average family of four for health insurance is currently $13000. It is estimated to double in the next 7 to 8 years. $26,000 is nearly half of the average income of a Ulysses worker. That’s a real crisis. 18,ooo people a year die, in the US, because they didn’t have health insurance. That’s a real crisis. Some of those 18,000 died because they didn’t call an ambulance because they couldn’t afford it. That’s a shame.
There is no crisis in paying for our wonderful single payer ambulance. It’s the best value I get for my tax dollar. $53 and we get quick response from trained emt’s and nobody gets a bill. My neighbor that doesn’t have health insurance doesn’t need to fear a big bill when her kid has an asthma attack. If we go to billing, the insurance companies will raise premiums to cover the cost – plus profit! Then not only will the uninsured not call when they need an ambulance, but those of us that do have insurance will become part of the system that allows the insurance industry to make obscene profits.
The Village held a public forum last year to get feedback from the community on wether or not to go to billing. The overwhelming majority said NO! What part of “no” don’t they understand?
We have to tell them again and again.
Allen Carstensen
Thanks for covering this, Allen. Ulysses has a high number of self-employed residents, and I’m telling you that there’s no way that we can get good ambulance coverage through medical insurance without paying a heck of a lot more than 53 dollars per year.
Divide that into 12 months, and it’s $4.41. And this is supposed to be a crisis? A crisis of paying less than 5 dollars a month for ambulance service?
It seems to me that the people who favor privatizing our community ambulance service have some kind of ideological axe to grind.
Insurance premiums are regulated by each states Insurance department/commission as overseen by the Office of Inspector General. In order for Insurance companies to increase policy premiums, they have to petition the department/commission for approval of rate hike.(increasing premiums due to Hurricanes for example) There is no proven evidence that Insurance policy premiums have been increased due to an agency/municipalities decision to charge for ambulance transport. Ambulance transport provisions are included in medicare policies as well as most health insurance policies. Individuals and Families have been paying premiums for this coverage for years. Its time the Insurance companies start paying claims for it.
John, what are the many self-employed people here in Trumansburg supposed to do? Many of them can only afford cut-rate insurance, given that they don’t have a big employer negotiating a better rate for better insurance? They’re going to get partial coverage, or none at all. What about the people who don’t have health insurance at all?
Is the Trumansburg Board of Trustees really about to throw these people out on the curb, just to save $5 a month per resident?!?
The middle of an economic recession, when the country is in the middle of an unresolved push for health care reform, is the absolute worst time to try to privatize the ambulance service.
Typical “one solution” approach to the problem. Why don’t they try to recruit new members into the EMT ranks? Could it be the number of volunteers are dropping because of low morale? Could it be that the trustee who said he’d be a good listener turned out to be more of a talker, not much interested in hearing what the EMT’s had to say? If you know any volunteer EMT’s in Tburg, you might want to listen to them. It will be an eye-opener for you, and they will be grateful to have an willing ear to listen.
John,
Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 119 percent.
http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
You imply that premiums are being kept under control by courageous advocates for the people at the Office of the Inspector General. It kind of looks like these corporations are raising their rates as fast as they think the market will bear.
The profit ratio of these corporations is climbing as fast as their premiums. Are you telling me that the Inspector General will approve a rate hike which increases their profit, but deny a rate increase to cover an actual expense?
I doubt that these corporations would cooperate if I tried to collect the evidence that you want to see, but a little common sense and a look at the trend lines is all you really need.
Health Insurance premiums have increased, that is a fact. It was not my intention to imply that ‘premiums are being kept under control by courageous advocates for the people at the Office of the Inspector General’. The amount collected under the Ambulance transport provisions in policies is a very very very very small amount of claims paid and corresponding cost in premium paid by policy holders. What I was trying to imply, and is a fact, that no insurance company has asked that rates be increased as a result of a municipalities/agency’s decision to impose an Ambulance transport fee.
John,
I disagree. These corporations have computer programs which track expenses. Ambulance fees are part of expenses. Not the biggest part, but not very, very, very, very small either. I would assume that they look at total expenses, add overhead and profit, and adjust premiums accordingly. Unless you are an industry insider, (god forbid) I doubt that you could prove your point, any more than I could come up with the empirical evidence to prove mine, but let’s try some more common sense.
Stephen Hemsley, CEO of United Health, has amassed a fortune of 3/4 of a billion dollars in just the last 5 years. It would be naive to assume that people like him have become as rich as they are, by being stupid businessmen. Charging a profit for services is not inherently wrong. The problem is that these corporations should not exist. Profit should not be part of the equation when it comes to health care.
What is inherently wrong with these corporations that should not exist, is they’re denying claims for every reason they can think of, and denying coverage due to a previous condition, and rescinding policies when they are no longer profitable. If Trumansburg begins billing, I’m sure residents will experience denial of claims.
United Health announced 5 billion in profit last year. That’s 5 billion that they collected in premiums, that did not go toward paying for health care. Medicare collects no profit. How can you justify the existence of United Health? How can you justify Trumansburg becoming part of this system? We have an efficient single payer system like Medicare. We have a socialized system like the Veterans Administration. Both of these systems score higher in patient satisfaction, than do the private health insurance corporations.
Many people complain that they shouldn’t have to pay for the Tburg ambulance in their taxes because they already are paying for this in their insurance premiums. I know it isn’t fair. There’s lots of things in life that are not fair. These people say that the insurance companies are getting a free ride, and that they should pay every time the ambulance rolls. They think that we’ll show them – bill ‘em! What they don’t realize is that these corporations want you to bill them. If people didn’t bill them they’d go out of business. They are in the business of paying just enough claims that we don’t storm the Bastille, then they add profit and bill us right back in the form of premiums.
But these are just the pocketbook reasons that we shouldn’t go to billing. The morale reasons are the most compelling. If we go to billing, someone, someday soon, is going to refuse help, for fear of the bill, and they will die.
“EMT supporter” above suggested that perhaps the increasing cost/decreasing volunteers had to do with low morale as a result of a certain Village trustee’s inability to listen. Good point. Maybe it’s time for Debbie Notke to take on that task. She has years of experience as a nurse in the ER of Cayuga Medical Center. Maybe she’s a little more empathetic.
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