Talk is cheap.
Once again, the selectmen accompanied their vote to raise ambulance fees with pleas for people to not let the cost discourage them from calling an ambulance when needed. They make a point to say the town doesn’t charge senior citizens more than what Medicare pays.
Reality check. With the 4% increases, rides in Ridgefield’s ambulance now start at close to $600 — the cost of “basic life support” service is $586. An ambulance call requiring “advanced life support” is now $958. Added costs can include fees for “paramedic intercept ($660), waiting time ($157), and a $14.27 “per mile” charge.
People who aren’t on Medicare, and don’t have top-flight insurance policies, may foot those bills.
Insurance is prominent in the rationale put forward in the selectmen’s now-annual discussion of ambulance rate hikes. Most insurance policies cover ambulance service, and people are paying for it in their insurance rates anyway: Why shouldn’t the town collect what its citizens pay their insurance companies for?
The town collects roughly $720,000 in fees for some 2,000 ambulance rides a year — despite “not going after people.” Town officials say that doesn’t cover the cost of providing ambulance service. Allocating costs is hard because the biggest expense — salaries for the firefighters who double as emergency medical workers — is there whether they’re waiting for a fire, an ambulance call, or both. The town’s somewhat hypothetical calculation is that 2013 ambulance costs were roughly $2.4 million — some $1.7 more than the town collected in fees.
Adding $750,000 — the equivalent of at least seven additional workers, with salaries and benefits — back into the budget would mean about a 0.66% tax increase.
Why, town officials argue, should taxpayers bear that cost when the people who use ambulances — or their insurance carriers — could take some of it?
There are also arguments against charging for ambulance service — as Selectwoman Barbara Manners’ regular abstention for the fee increase vote testifies. Taxpayers already finance the fire department, and relatively few households have fires that need to be put out — thank goodness. Should people who need ambulances be hit with hefty fees for a service they’re already paying for in their taxes? No one talks of billing people whose houses catch fire.
And while ambulance rides may be covered by most policies, many people’s health insurance comes with high deductibles these days — a $10,000 deductible isn’t unheard of.
Sometimes those ambulance charges do come out of people’s pockets.
With reasonable arguments on both sides, the selectmen can defend the ambulance charges as responsible governance — looking after the taxpayer.
But they’re kidding themselves if they believe people aren’t going to think twice about fees of $600 to $1,000 when deciding whether they need an ambulance.