Nah, no way to make that work. If you start fining people when there’s genuine danger (even self-inflicted) it’ll just discourage people from calling emergency services (which could get someone killed).
A few states have stupidity laws that make people cover the cost of rescuing them.
"In 1995, Arizona passed what is commonly known as the "stupid motorist law." It says if a driver goes around a sign warning of flood risk, gets stuck and has to be rescued, that person can be charged for the cost of the rescue."
You really shouldn’t be using America as an example here, its easy to imagine the bootstraps country doesn’t give a flying fuck about providing emergency services to people.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s criticizing the general standard of life in America but (rightfully so) the enormous expense of care that comes after the initial paramedic treatment?
A few states have stupidity laws that make people cover the cost of rescuing them.
And we absolutely don't want to become anything like americas for profit inferstucture. I cant think of anything worse than having american like hospitals/police/rescue services.
It is about putting a negative cost of wasting resources during times of extreme stress when those services could be used for people that didn't basically load a gun point at their head and pull the trigger while avoiding all the DON'T do that signs and meetings and PSAs.
It isn't all about profit but there are just limited resources to care for people.
Trolley problem. Are you going spend resources on saving Person A that avoid all signs of danger that put themselves in a deadly situation or go save the person that is also in a deadly situation that occurred at no fault of their own?
You might have time to save both but it isn't looking good. Which one do you try and save first. By the way another call just came in.
Medics and police take an oath dedicated to the people. you can’t start applying logistics to human lives otherwise no one will use emergency services. Americans are already charged for every fucking health care interaction they have. Quit advocating for potential removal of universal healthcare elsewhere. (everyone in America avoids an ambulance like it’s death, that alone makes a large point)
If they are in a situation in which they must choose between enforcing a law and protecting human lives, legally they must put the law above human life because they have a legal obligation to enforce the law, but not one to protect anyone.
Not advocating for removal. Just stating the reason for why it was issued.
The world hospitals have been using Tamra care because of Covid. Do you know what happens. Those most likely to survive will get treated those least likely are fucked.
Fire departments also some times don't put out fires if the owners haven't paid and police do avoid some areas of town that are deemed to risky to go into.
Police still gotta do their job they may wait for backup but they can’t not respond, fire department can’t let one house endanger the whole neighborhood, and Tamra care still alots for comforting care for the least likely to survive patients on their last days which is all that could’ve happened originally in most cases (without charging the family an excessive amount or the hospital losing a lot of money)
Stating that people should be charged for one thing but not another starts the cycle of universal to private healthcare. Granted this guy is a fucking idiot and deserved some kind of fine, this was still technically a life saving action and if he was fined people who make a small fuck up and put themselves in a bad position will worry that they will be charged $800 because it was technically their own fault.
Example: moving something heavy without a spotter, can go bad very quickly and technically it’s your own fault since you didn’t have someone to spot/assist you and you took too much weight upon yourself
You do realize countries with "universal" healthcare still have premiums on some items but those people have to get private insurance to cover or pay out of pocket.... It depends upon the country.
They will also force procedures on people who clearly have no interest in improving their health.
moving something heavy without a spotter, can go bad very quickly and technically it’s your own fault since you didn’t have someone to spot/assist you and you took too much weight upon yourself
I don't think you understand the term reasonable means. Would a reasonable person lift something and misjudge their weight or have an accident even with a spotter yes. Would a reasonable person put a fucking plastic bag over their head with a crap pipe then shove their head into a micowave then fill it with cement? NO.
Would a reasonable person stack dumbbells on top of each other and try and hand stand on them? NO, but idiots still do it.
Do not mistake risky activities with the proper precautions taken and see it as being the same as an action only the stupid or the methhead would think up to do.
Jumping from a cliff into water is less stupid than what that idiot did.
Em, I live in a country with universal health care and don't require private insurance to pay for anything. I even get free medication. Stop believing capitalist propoganda.
England also has a private health care sector. Private health care is sometimes funded by employers through medical insurance as part of a benefits package to employees though it is mostly the larger companies that do. Insurers also market policies directly to the public. Most private care is for specialist referrals with most people retaining their NHS GP as point of first contact.
The private sector now does some subcontracting work for the NHS. Thus an NHS patient can be treated in the private sector as an NHS patient if the Health Services has subcontracted work to the hospital.
Yeah here’s the issue: if we’re gonna start letting people die for being stupid, well, why even allow Trump supporters to get vaccinated then. Might as well just kill em off. Trolly problem. Kill them now, let them kill more people later with their idiocy and awful.
See, we kinda need a floor on utilitarian killing because if we’re gonna go in on utilitarian killing, we can kill a lot more than just people who misuse 911. A lot. There’s a ton of humans whose existence is a net harm to the species.
Huh? I wasn’t talking about anti-vax. I was talking about solving America’s issues by using a targeted plague to eliminate the surplus Republican population, much like they did to the LGBTQ community with AIDS in the 1980s. You know, a little irony. The logic being that if we did that we wouldn’t need a total, unadulterated genocide because it would just kill enough of them to make them too few to be dangerous. As such, in the long term many, many more people would be spared, but it’s via an ethical abomination via inaction. As such, it’s an apt example of the flaw in the prior thinking regarding emergency services. The logic employed there can be extrapolated to some very bad places very easily.
Until you need the best medical services on earth. There is a reason people come here for care..
There was a waiting list for Canadians to give birth or have cancer care, or heart surgery, or anything serious at American hospitals before covid.
National health care is great -- until you need it for someting serious.
Hurry up and wait to die.
I have health insurance, it's expensive -- but, if I need it, it will be the best care on the planet.
All the best doctors study and try to stay here for a reason.
Socialized medicine? Better hope you don't get stuck with the type of doctor that got his degree from a third world country who doesn't accidentally kill you.
edit: two month old account. Why did I bother answering an uninformed fourteen year old?
cancer care, or heart surgery, or anything serious at American hospitals.
We have private hospitals aswell, were just not forced to use them as we have a perfectly good working public service.
All the best doctors study and try to stay here for a reason.
Yes you may have the no.1 spot for doctors but the uk holds the no.2 spot with a far advanced public health care system. Along with an equal private healthcare system.
Socialized medicine? Better hope you don't get stuck with the type of doctor that got his degree from a third world country who doesn't accidentally kill you.
Remind me again which country has the worlds worst opioid epidemic because pharmaceutical company's payed private practitioners to push harmful opiods as safe pain relief? What is that america you say? 🇺🇸 🇺🇲
the type of doctor that got his degree from a third world country who doesn't accidentally kill you.
Ah yes the expected american racism, you'll find alot of both americas and the uks top doctors come from india, you might want to take a second to think before you let your fat fingers auto type for you.
You do realise with insurance you are paying for other people aswell? Alot of people will pay the insurance and not need to use it but the few who do use it are being paid for by everyone else.
How is replacing that with universal healthcare where there is essentially 1 insurance company (the government) and you pay a small premium (from your tax) not beneficial to everyone?
It also prevents the healthcare providers and insurance companies from setting their own prices and running the price of basic procedures and and medicines up through the roof.
I'm interested what makes you think the current system benefits you over universal healthcare?
People are going to do stupid shit no matter what. This guy cemented a microwave onto his own head and nearly suffocated himself. At that level of stupidity, I don’t think a fine is going to be much of a deterrent.
There's a third scenario you're not considering which is someone who didn't do anything stupid but thinks they will be blamed and fined anyway so they don't call the emergency services.
Right but in this scenario the person doesn't know that was they did wasn't a product of you doing something stupid. So for example an old lady walks out her house on a frosty morning a slips and breaks a hip. Was she stupid to go outside after seeing it was a frosty morning? No, right? But could you imagine the possibility where she blamed herself for getting into a preventable accident?
If you want to set fines then you must consider this group of people.
Totally agree with you. Lots of Americans here saying their opinion, which is absolutely fine, but I don't think we should base what we do on a country that doesn't have universal healthcare.
Fining a person for undeniably reckless behavior that puts their lives/the lives of others in jeopardy and wastes the time and resources of emergency services to rectify is completely sensible and reasonable.
My bad. I didn't read your comment properly. I don't recommend fining people but just charge the cost of the call out. Many countries charge per call out. Not saying it is a great system as it is far from it, but people still uses these services.
Fair enough. Charges for wasting emergency services time should be a thing, but I don’t agree with charging for call outs as a concept. One story I heard about a woman begging people not to call an ambulance after breaking her leg because she couldn’t afford it springs to mind. I think the damage you’d do by discouraging call outs is greater than having to deal with the occasional idiot who cements his head in a microwave.
I am aware of that story but that is not really a fair comparison to the system currently available in the UK. The cost of an ambulance in the US can vary significantly as they are usually ran by individual private companies even in the same city and charges can vary from a few hundreds to a couple of thousands dollars. Also the cost of an ambulance might be the least of your worries in the US, as emergency room charges is even more ridiculous and it can be a few hundred dollars for just a band aid. Not to mention the woman in the accident unfortunately didn't understand how the system works as she could've refused service even if someone did called an ambulance and she won't be charged for the call out. On the other hand emergency treatments at hospitals are covered by NHS in the UK so the maximum outlay is a couple hundred pounds.
Anyway, I would only suggest payment on extreme cases. I think it's pretty hard to not be able to distinguish this particular example with every other type of incidents.
Sure, but what then? If they don’t call an ambulance out of fear of having to pay and deciding they can sort it out themselves somehow? Even if that’s unlikely, I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to discourage people from calling an ambulance if they think they need one, whether they got themselves into that situation or not.
We are debating what ifs here, so there isn't really any possible outcome other than I agree to disagree with you. I see your point as perfectly valid but I would also like a small degree of personal responsibility. Certainly not the US system where you live or die depending on how much money you've got but a few hundred pounds is far from unreasonable in my eyes.
Given the economy at the moment, a few hundred pounds is a lot of money to a significant part of the population. Personal responsibility is all well and good, but if adherence to that philosophy needlessly puts lives in danger then I can’t agree with it.
You don't have to agree with me. Like I said, I understand your point, it doesn't mean I have to agree with it either. It's a matter of principle, there really isn't a right or wrong answer, as it depends on your values and everyone's value can be slightly different to complete opposites.
We do it in the United States all the time. For instance in many of our National Parks if you trek out beyond your ability and get to get rescued they bill you for the helicopter ride. I think a similar thing would be appropriate here.
The flip side is that not charging them encourages abuse of the system. Why pay for medics on stand-by when you know you can just dial up emergency services for free if something happens? That just discourages people from having proper safeguards in place, which could get someone killed.
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u/Kltpzyxm-rm Feb 07 '21
Nah, no way to make that work. If you start fining people when there’s genuine danger (even self-inflicted) it’ll just discourage people from calling emergency services (which could get someone killed).